By how natural everything looked, undesigned. Four roads led off The Commons, like the spokes of a wheel, or the directions of a compass.Īs he sat quietly and let the village happen around him he was impressed by how beautiful it was, these old homes facing the green, with their mature perennial gardens and trees. Beside that was a boulangerie, the Bistro and a bookstore. It consisted, as far as Gamache could see, of a depanneur whose Pepsi sign read ‘Beliveau’. The village green sat, not surprisingly, in the center of the village, a road called The Commons circling it with homes, except behind him, which seemed to be the commercial district. Between him and them was a pond, a bunch of sweater-clad children circling it, hunting for frogs, he supposed. Three huge pine trees faced at the far end of the green. The weather was usually crisp and clear, the summer scents of old garden roses and phlox were replaced by musky autumn leaves, woodsmoke and roast turkey. And Thanksgiving, in early October, was the perfect time. Anyone fortunate enough to find it once usually found their way back. Like Narnia, it was generally found unexpectedly and with a degree of surprise that such an elderly village should have been hiding in this valley all along. Three Pines wasn’t on any tourist map, being too far off any main or even secondary road.
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