The single light still shone on the portrait, and even from the door Constance could see that her host hadn’t simply painted mad Ruth. Nor had she simply painted forgotten and embittered Mary. The elderly woman was staring into the distance. Into a dark and lonely future. But. But. Just there. Just slightly out of reach. Just becoming visible. There was something else.
Clara had captured despair, but she’d also captured hope.
Constance had taken her coffee and rejoined Ruth and Rosa, Clara and Myrna. She’d listened to them then. And she’d begun, just begun, to understand what it might be like to be able to put more than a name to a face.
That had been four days ago.
And now she was packed and ready to leave. Just one last cup of tea in the bistro, and she’d be off.
“Don’t go.”
Myrna had spoken softly.
“I have to.”
Constance broke eye contact with Myrna. It was altogether too intimate. Instead, she looked out the frosted windows, to the snow-covered village. It was dusk and Christmas lights were appearing on trees and homes.
“Can I come back? For Christmas?”
There was a long, long silence. And all Constance’s fears returned, crawling out of that silence. She dropped her eyes to her hands, neatly folded in her lap.
She’d exposed herself. Been tricked into thinking she was safe, she was liked, she was welcome.
Then she felt a large hand on her hand and she looked up.
“I’d love that,” Myrna said, and smiled. “We’ll have such fun.”
“Fun?” asked Gabri, plopping onto the sofa.
“Constance is coming back for Christmas.”
“Wonderful. You can come to the carol service on Christmas Eve. We do all the favorites. ‘Silent Night.’ ‘The First No?l’—”
“‘The Twelve Gays of Christmas,’” said Clara.
“‘It Came Upon a Midnight Queer,’” said Myrna.
“The classics,” said Gabri. “Though this year we’re practicing a new one.”
“Not ‘O Holy Night,’ I hope,” said Constance. “Not sure I’m ready for that one.”
Gabri laughed. “No. ‘The Huron Carol.’ Do you know it?” He sang a few bars of the old Québécois carol.
“I love that one,” she said. “But no one does it anymore.”
Though it shouldn’t have surprised her that in this little village she’d find something else that had been all but lost to the outside world.
Constance said her good-byes, and to calls of “à bient?t!,” she and Myrna walked to her car.
Constance started it to warm up. It was getting too dark to play hockey and the kids were just leaving the rink, wobbling through the snow on their skates, using their hockey sticks for balance.
It was now or never, Constance knew.
“We used to do that,” she said, and Myrna followed her gaze.
“Play hockey?”
Constance nodded. “We had our own team. Our father would coach us. Mama would cheer. It was Frère André’s favorite sport.”
She met Myrna’s eyes. There, she thought. Done. The dirty secret was finally out in the open. When she returned, Myrna would have lots of questions. And finally, finally, Constance knew she would answer them.
Myrna watched her friend leave, and thought no more of that conversation.