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Shhhhhh.

The gun placed at the base of her skull. The push through the bookstore door. Catching Gamache’s eye as he sat in the bistro, and that instant of mutual recognition. Of what she was about to do. Of what he had to let her do.

She was about to die. So that others in the bistro—including Armand and Jean-Guy, including Ruth and Gabri and Olivier—might have a chance.

Shhhhh. But Isabelle continued.

She told Haniya about that moment, frozen in time, as she held Armand’s eyes, and thought of her children. Then Isabelle braced and shoved with all her might, so that her body slammed into the gunman behind her. Throwing him, for one precious moment, off guard.

The last thing she saw, the last thing Isabelle believed she’d ever see, was Gamache lunging forward, toward the other gunmen.

She hoped he’d survived. Hoped Jean-Guy had. And the others.

Because she knew, as she felt the explosion, that she had not.

And then she described things she didn’t know, but had herself been told. How Ruth had, in the midst of the bedlam, crawled across the floor of the bistro, to hold her hand. So that she would not die alone.

How her husband, her colleagues, her friends, had taken turns at the hospital, holding her hand and reading to her.

Haniya listened, and wondered if someone, anyone, would hold her hand when her time came.

“Things are strongest where they’re broken,” she said, and wondered where that had come from.

“Yes.”

Neither woman had described their long, long journey back. But both recognized it had led them there. To that moment. In this quiet place, in this peaceful village.

Shhhhh.

The Hero of the Sudan looked around the bistro, at the villagers. At the friends and families. There were small cracks between them. She knew that because she could see the light.

Armand met Reine-Marie, Myrna, and Jean-Guy outside the bistro.

“How did it go?” he asked.

But he could tell by their expressions that it hadn’t gone well. Or, perhaps, “well” was not the word.

“Let’s go inside and talk,” he said. Putting his hand on Reine-Marie’s arm, he searched her eyes. “You okay?”

She nodded, but without conviction. “Actually, I’d like to go home. I want to go through that last box. With the kids on the sleigh ride it’ll be quiet.”

The truth was, she was a coward. Vincent Gilbert might be in the bistro, and she was terrified of what she might say, what she might do, if she met him. Home was the only safe place.

“Do you want company?” Armand asked.

“Non, merci, mon coeur. You need to hear what they have to say.”

He looked at Jean-Guy and Myrna, grim-faced. He probably did need to hear it, though he doubted he wanted to hear it.

While she went home, the rest headed into the bistro. Isabelle was sitting by the fire with Haniya, Ruth, and Clara. They got to their feet when the others arrived. Except Ruth, who took the opportunity to switch her empty scotch glass for Clara’s almost full one.

“Looks like you have things to talk about,” said Clara. It didn’t take a portrait painter to understand their expressions. “Why don’t we go back to my place?”

“What? We have the best seats in the house, right in front of the fireplace,” said Ruth. “Why would I leave to walk through a blizzard to your shack?”

Rosa, in her arms, nodded agreement and gave Clara the stink eye.

Clara glanced outside at the softly falling flurries. Hardly a maelstrom. “Well, I have a bottle of single malt.”