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‘Well, I’m sure she divined it.’

‘Once people started showing up, maybe. Gabri, how could you do this to her? To us?’Advertisement

‘She’ll be fine. Look at her. She’s loosening up already.’

Myrna had fetched her a tumbler of white wine and Jeanne Chauvet was drinking as though it was water before the miracle. Myrna looked over and lifted her eyebrows at Clara. Much more of this and Myrna would have to conduct the séance.

‘Séance?’ Jeanne asked a minute later when Myrna asked what they could expect. ‘Who’s holding a séance?’

All eyes turned to Gabri, who very carefully placed the platter on a table and went over to stand beside Jeanne. Gabri’s bulk and natural exuberance seemed to make the nondescript woman shrink even further until she looked like clothes on a hanger. Clara guessed she was somewhere around forty. Her hair was dull brown and looked as though she cut it herself. Her eyes were faded blue and her clothing was bargain-bin K-mart. Clara, who’d lived in poverty as an artist most of her life, recognized the signs. She wondered fleetingly why Jeanne had come to Three Pines and paid to stay at Gabri’s B. & B., which while not ruinous wasn’t cheap either.

Jeanne no longer seemed afraid, just confused. Clara wanted to go over and put her arms round the little woman and shield her from what was coming next. She wanted to give her a good hot dinner and a warm bath and some kindness, then maybe she’d become substantial.

Clara too glanced around the room. Peter had flatly refused to come, calling it hogwash. But he’d held her hand an instant longer than necessary as she’d left, and told her to be careful. Walking under the stars round the village green to the cheery bistro Clara had smiled. Peter had been raised a strict Anglican. This sort of thing repulsed him. It also terrified him.

They’d had a small discussion over dinner, with Peter taking the predictable view that this was nuts.

‘Are you calling me nuts?’ Clara had asked, knowing he hadn’t but loving to see him squirm. He’d raised his head, full of lush grey curls, and looked at her angrily. Tall and slender with aquiline nose and intelligent eyes, he looked like a bank president, not an artist. And yet that was what he was. But an artist who seemed unconnected to his heart. He lived in a deeply rational world where anything unexplainable was ‘nuts’ or ‘silly’ or ‘insane’. Emotions were insane. Except his love for Clara, which was complete and all-consuming.

‘No, I’m calling the psychic nuts. She’s a charlatan. Contacting the dead, predicting the future. Bullshit. It’s the oldest game in the book.’

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‘Which book? The Bible?’

‘Don’t start with me, Clara,’ Peter had warned.

‘No, really. Which book talks about transformations? Of water into wine? Of bread into flesh? Or magic, like walking on water? Of parting the seas and making the blind see and the crippled walk?’

‘Those were miracles, not magic.’

‘Ahh.’ Clara had nodded and smiled and gone back to eating.

So Clara found herself with Myrna as her date. Madeleine and Monsieur Béliveau were there, not quite holding hands but they might as well have been. His long sweater-clad arm was just touching hers, and she didn’t shy away. Once again Clara was taken by how attractive Madeleine was. She was one of those women other women wanted as a best friend and men wanted as a wife.

Clara smiled at Monsieur Béliveau and blushed. Because she’d caught them in an intimate moment, seen feelings best kept private? She considered for a moment, but realized the blush had more to do with her than him. She felt differently about Monsieur Béliveau after overhearing Gilles that afternoon. The gentle grocer had gone from being a benign and kindly presence in their lives to a mystery. Clara didn’t like the transformation. And she didn’t like herself for being so susceptible to gossip.

Gilles Sandon stood in front of the fireplace, rubbing the warmth into the back of his substantial jeans with vigor. He was so big he almost blocked the entire hearth. Odile Montmagny brought him a glass of wine which he took absent-mindedly, preferring instead to concentrate on Monsieur Béliveau, who seemed oblivious.

Clara had always liked Odile. They were much the same age and both were in the arts, Clara a painter and Odile a poet. She claimed to be working on an epic poem, an ode to the English of Quebec, which was suspicious since she was French. Clara would never forget the reading she’d attended at the Royal Canadian Legion in St-Rémy. All sorts of local writers had been invited, including Ruth and Odile. Ruth had read first, from her searing work, ‘To the Congregation’. pqdm.com