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“He won’t do it?” asked Myrna.

“Have you ever heard Armand sing?” Reine-Marie asked.

“And where were you?” Clara turned to her. “You could’ve come over.”

“I’m actually sorry I didn’t. I’d like to have met her. I suspect now I won’t. Madame Daoud will be gone soon, right?”

“One way or another,” said Ruth.

“Now, Ruth,” said Annie. “Remember what we talked about.”

“I’m not allowed to kill anyone.”

“Good. Remember that.”

“I think what we all need to remember,” said Reine-Marie, as she looked at the semicircle of friends, “is what Haniya Daoud has been through in her life. She’s younger than you,” she said to Annie. “She lost her own children, but has saved thousands of others. She’s been sold into slavery. Raped and tortured. Imagine, try to imagine the horrors she’s been through. And out of that she’s started a movement that has saved and empowered women around the world. And we expect her to make small talk? To be polite? And when she isn’t, when she’s impatient and angry, we joke about killing her?” Her eyes, her voice, her expression had turned hard. “Killing her?”

There was silence.

Clara sighed. “You’re right. I think she moved to the Auberge because she could tell that I didn’t want her here.”

“After all she’s gone through, how could we expect her to be like us?” asked Annie.

“No,” said Ruth. “Not like us. Better than us. We really were expecting a saint.”

“Not flesh and blood with feelings of her own,” said Myrna. “She might’ve been unpleasant, but we were mean. Cruel even. Letting her know she wasn’t wanted.”

Myrna Landers knew there were few things worse than being excluded, shunned. It was seen in some communities as a punishment worse than death.

“Why didn’t you come over?” Clara asked Reine-Marie.

But Reine-Marie wasn’t listening. She was thinking of her conversation with Armand, about Haniya Daoud. How he’d described her. There was respect, compassion, but there was also concern. An awareness of the damage damaged people could do.

“Maman?” Annie interrupted her thoughts.

“Oh, sorry.” Reine-Marie turned to Clara. “Work got in the way, I’m afraid.”

“More monkeys?” asked Myrna.

“Oui.”

“My favorite was always Davy Jones,” said Clara.

“You really are a daydream believer,” said Myrna.

“What’s the count now?” asked Ruth.

“Sixty-three. What could they mean?” Reine-Marie asked Myrna, their resident psychologist. “Why would someone spend more than half a century secretly collecting monkeys?”

“The question isn’t why monkeys,” said Ruth. “The question is why a secret?”

“She’s right,” said Myrna, turning astonished eyes on the mad poet at the other end of the sofa.

“She was bound to be right eventually,” said Clara. “Law of averages.”

“Is there such a thing?” asked Annie. “Can’t math, numbers, be interpreted, massaged to mean just about anything? To predict any outcome?”

They all knew what Annie was really thinking.