And people.Īpril in Québec was a climatological shitstorm. So that every front entrance was polka-dotted with muck. A month of muttered curses and mud-caked boots and splattered cars and dogs rolling, then shaking. Of sublime afternoons spent sitting outside in the bright sunshine with a glass of wine, then waking to another foot of snow. Days of snow and warmth.Īpril in Québec was a month of cruel contrasts. Send a real spring and not this crapfest of slush and freezing, teasing days. Woodsmoke drifted from the old fieldstone, brick, clapboard homes. The forest beyond stood like an army of winter wraiths, skeleton arms dangling, limbs clacking together in the breeze. And the illusion and delusion that it must be milder out, surely, by now. Somehow, having survived another bitterly cold Canadian winter, early spring always got them. Villagers out walking their dogs were clumping around in rubber boots and wrapped in layers of clothing, hoping to keep April away from their skin and out of their bones. There were patches of snow on the sodden grass. The dirt road was covered in slush and mud. While perhaps not totally healing, it was at least comforting in its familiarity. If the phone was an assault, the window was the balm. On the screen, for the world to see, was the quickly cooling body of Clara’s artistic career.Īs Myrna read, Clara wrapped her large, paint-stained hands around her mug of hot chocolate, a specialité de la maison, and shifted her eyes from her friend to the mullioned window and the tiny Québec village beyond. Or maybe not-so-mock.Ĭlara gave Myrna her phone, though the bookstore owner already knew what she’d find.īefore meeting Clara for breakfast, she’d checked her Twitter feed. “Is Ruth coming?” Myrna looked around the bistro in mock panic. “Merde?” Myrna Landers looked over her bowl of café au lait at her friend. #MorrowSucksĪre you kidding me? They let him back into the Sûreté? #SûretéSux What’s happened to Clara Morrow? She used to be a great artist. This book is dedicated to Bishop, our golden.

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