Missing Joseph Part 39

"What next?" St. James asked.

"London," Lynley said. "It's the only direction I can think of at the moment, as strong-arming suspects doesn't appear to be something that's going to have any appreciable effect."

"Will you use Havers?"

"Speaking of strong-arming." Lynley chuckled. "No, I'll have to see to it myself. Since I've sent her to Truro on my credit cards, I don't imagine she'll be h.e.l.l-bent on getting down there and back in the customary twenty-four police hours. I'd say three days... with first-cla.s.s accommodations all the way, no doubt. So I'll handle London."

"What can we do to help?"

"Enjoy your holiday. Take Deborah on a drive. c.u.mbria, perhaps."

"The lakes?"

"That's a thought. But I understand Aspatria's quite nice in January."

St. James smiled. "That's going to be one h.e.l.l of a day trip. We'll have to be up by five. You'll owe me for this. And if there's nothing to be uncovered about the Spence woman there, you'll owe me in spades."

"As always."

Ahead of them, a black cat slinked out from between two buildings, something grey and limp between its jaws. This the animal deposited on the pavement and began tapping gently in the mindlessly cruel way of all cats, hoping for more tormenting play before a final pounce ended the captive's fruitless hope for survival. As they approached, the animal froze, hunched over its prize, fur bristling, waiting. St. James glanced down to see a small rat blinking hopelessly from between the cat's paws. He thought about frightening the cat away. The game of death it played was unnecessarily heartless. But rats, he knew, were breeders of disease. It was best-if not most merciful-to let the cat continue.

"What would you have done had Polly named Shepherd?" St. James asked.

"Arrested the b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Turned him over to c.l.i.theroe CID. Had his job."

"And since she didn't name him?"

"I'll have to come at it from another direction."

"To step on his face?"

"Metaphorically. I'm my father's own son in wish, if not in deed. It's nothing I'm proud of. But there it is."

"So what did you give Shepherd just before he drove off?"

Lynley adjusted the carton beneath his arm. "I gave him something to think about."

Colin remembered with perfect clarity the final time his father had struck him. He was sixteen years old. Foolish, too hot-headed to think of the consequences of defi ance, he had risen angrily and bodily to his mother's defence. Shoving his chair back from the dinner table-he could still recall the sound it made as it sc.r.a.ped across the floor and slammed into the wall-he'd shouted, Just leave her alone, Pa! and grabbed his father's arms to keep him from slapping her face another time.

Pa's rage always took root in something inconsequential, and because they never knew when to expect his anger to flare into violence, he was that much more terrifying. Anything could set him off: the condition of a beef joint at dinner, a b.u.t.ton missing from his s.h.i.+rt, a request for money to pay the gas bill, a comment about the hour at which he had arrived home the previous night. This particular evening it was a telephone call from Colin's biology master. Another exam failed, lessons incomplete, was there a problem at home, Mr. Tranville wondered.

His mother had revealed that much over the dinner table, tentatively, as if attempting to telegraph her husband a message she was unwilling to say in front of their child. "Colin's teacher asked if there were problems, Ken. Here at home. He said counselling might-"

Which was as far as she'd got. Pa said, "Counselling? Did I hear you right? Counselling?" in a tone that should have told her that she'd have been wiser to eat quietly and keep the telephone call to herself.

But instead, she said, "He can't study, Ken, if things are in chaos. You see that, don't you?" in a voice that pleaded for reason but only succeeded in betraying her fear.

Pa thrived on fear. He loved to feed twigs of intimidation into its fire. He set down his knife first, then his fork. He pushed back his chair from the table. He said, "Tell me about all this chaos, Clare." When she read his intentions and said she supposed it was nothing, really, his father said, "No. Tell me. I want to hear." When she didn't cooperate, he got up. He said, "Answer me, Clare," and when she said, "Nothing. Do eat your meal, Ken," he was on her.

He'd only managed to strike her three times-one hand twisted in her hair and the other smacking harder each time she cried out-when Colin grabbed him. His father's response was the same as it had been from Colin's childhood. Women's faces were meant to be abused with the open hand. On boy children a real man used his fists.

The difference this time was that Colin was bigger. And while he was as afraid of his father as he'd always been, he was also angry. Anger and fear washed his body with adrenaline. When Pa struck him, for the first time in his life, Colin struck back. It had taken more than five minutes for his father to beat him into submission. He did it with his fists, his belt, and his feet. But when it was over, the delicate balance of power had s.h.i.+fted. And when Colin said, "I'll kill you next time, you filthy b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Just see if I won't," he saw for an instant, reflected on his father's face, that he too was capable of inspiring fear.

It had been a source of pride to Colin that his father had never struck his mother again, that his mother had filed for divorce a month later, and most of all that they were rid of the b.a.s.t.a.r.d because of him. He'd sworn he'd never be like his father. He'd never again struck a living soul. Until Polly.

On the side of the road leading out of Win-slough, Colin sat in the Land Rover and rolled between his palms the piece of material from Polly's skirt which the inspector had pressed into his hand. All of it had been such a pleasure: feeling the sting of her flesh against his palm, tearing the material so easily from her body, tasting the salty sweat of her terror, hearing her cries, her pleas, and especially her choked sob of pain-no moan of s.e.xual arousal now, Polly, is this what you wanted, is this how you hoped it would happen between us?-and finally accepting the triumph of her numb defeat. He slammed into her, he ploughed her, he mastered her, all the time saying cow b.i.t.c.h sow c.u.n.t in his father's voice.

He'd done it all in a storm of blind rage and desperation, frantic to keep the memory and the truth of Annie at bay.

Colin pressed the piece of material to his closed eyes and tried not to think about either of them, Polly or his wife. With Annie's dying, he'd crossed every line, violated every code, wandered in the dark, and lost himself entirely, somewhere between the valley of his worst depression and the desert of his blackest despair. He'd spent the years since her death caught between trying to rewrite the history of her torturous illness and trying to recall, reinvent, and resurrect the image of a marriage that was utterly perfect. The resulting lie had been so much easier to face than the reality that when Polly tried to obliterate it forever in the vicarage, Colin struck out in an effort to preserve it as much as in an attempt to hurt her.

He'd always felt he could continue to cope and move forward in life as long as he had the falsehood. It comprised what he called the sweetness of their relations.h.i.+p, the sure knowledge that with Annie he'd had warmth and tenderness, complete understanding, compa.s.sion, and love. It also comprised an account of her illness, one filled with the details of her n.o.ble suffering, replete with ill.u.s.trations of his efforts to save her and his eventual calm acceptance of the fact he could not. The falsehood depicted him at her bedside, holding her hand and trying to memorise the colour of her eyes before she closed them forever. The falsehood declared that as life was taken from her in vicious bits and pieces, her optimism never faltered and her spirit stayed whole.

You'll forget all this, people had said at the funeral. Given time, you'll remember only the beauty of what you had. And you had two wonderful years with her, Colin. So let time work its magic, and watch what happens. You'll heal and look back and still have those two years.

It hadn't happened that way. He hadn't healed. He'd simply rearranged his recollection of what the end had been like and how they'd got there. In his revised version of their history, Annie had accepted her fate with grace and dignity while he had been unfailing in his support of her. Gone from memory were her descents into bitterness. Excised from existence was his implacable rage. In the place of these was a new reality that masked everything he couldn't face: how he hated her in moments as much as he loved her, how he despised his marriage vows, how he embraced her death as his only possible escape from a life that he could not bear, and how in the end all they had to share in a marriage that had once been joyful was the fact of her illness and the day-to-day horror of having to cope with it.

Make it different, he had thought, after she had died, make me better than I was. And he had used the past six years to do so, seeking oblivion instead of forgiveness.

He rubbed the gauzy material against his face, feeling it snag on the scratches that Polly's nails had left. It was stiff in places with Polly's blood and musty with the scent of her body's secrets.

"I'm sorry," he whispered. "Polly."

He'd been steadfast in his unwillingness to face Polly Yarkin because of what she represented. She knew the facts. She also forgave them. But her knowledge alone made her the single contagion he had to avoid if he was to continue to live with himself. She couldn't see this fact. She was incapable of grasping the importance of their leading completely separate lives. She saw only her love for him and her longing to make him whole once again. If she'd only been able to understand that they'd shared too much of Annie ever to be able to share each other, she would have learned to accept the limitations he'd imposed upon their relations.h.i.+p after his wife's death. Accepting these, she would have allowed him to go his own way without her. Ultimately, she would have rejoiced in his love for Juliet. And, thus, Robin Sage would still be alive.

Colin knew what had happened and how she had done it. He understood why. If keeping the knowledge to himself was the only way he could make amends to Polly, he would do that. Scotland Yard would unravel the skein of events in good time once they looked into her access to Cotes Fell. He would not betray her while he himself bore so much responsibility for what she had done.

He drove on. Unlike the previous night, all the lights were on in the cottage when he pulled to a stop in the courtyard of Cotes Hall. Juliet ran out as he opened the car door. She was struggling into her pea jacket. A red-andgreen scarf dangled from her arm like a banner.

"Thank G.o.d," she said. "I thought I'd go mad with the waiting."

"Sorry." He got out of the Land Rover. "Those blokes from Scotland Yard stopped me as I was leaving."

She hesitated. "You? Why?"

"They'd been to the vicarage."

She b.u.t.toned the coat, wrapped the scarf round her neck. She fished gloves from her pocket and began drawing them on. "Yes. Well. I've them to thank for this, don't I?"

"They'll be off soon, I expect. The inspector's got the wind up about the vicar going to London the day before he...you know. The day before he died. He'll no doubt be on the trail of that next. And then on the trail of something else afterwards. That's how it goes with these types. So he won't be bothering Maggie again."

"Oh G.o.d." Juliet was looking at her hands, taking too much time about adjusting the gloves. She was smoothing the leather against each finger in an uneven motion that betrayed her anxiety. "I've phoned the police in c.l.i.theroe, but they couldn't be bothered to take me seriously. She's thirteen years old, they said, she's only been gone for three hours, madam, she'll turn up by nine. Kids always do. But they don't, Colin. You know it. They don't always turn up. And not in this case. Maggie won't. I don't even know where to begin looking for her. Josie said she ran off from the schoolyard. Nick went after her. I must find her."

He took her arm. "I'll find her for you. You've got to wait here."

She twisted from his grasp. "No! You can't. I need to know...I just...Listen to me. I must be the one. I've got to find her. I must do it myself."

"You need to stay here. She may phone. If she does, you'll want to be able to fetch her, won't you?"

"I can't just wait here."

"You've no choice."

"And you don't understand. You're trying to be kind. I know that. But listen. She isn't going to phone. The inspector's been with her. He's filled her head with all sorts of things...Please. Colin. I've got to find her. Help me."

"I will. I am. I'll phone the instant I have any news. I'll stop in c.l.i.theroe and get some men out in cars. We'll find her. I promise you. Now go back inside."

"No. Please."

"It's the only way, Juliet." He led her towards the house. He could feel her resistance. He opened the door. "Stay by the phone."

"He filled her head with lies," she said. "Colin, where's she gone? She has no money, no food. She's got only her school coat to keep her warm. It's not heavy enough. It's cold and G.o.d knows-"

"She can't have got far. And remember, she's with Nick. He'll watch out for her."

"But if they hitchhiked...if someone picked them up. My G.o.d, they could be in Manchester by now. Or Liverpool."

He ran his fingers against her temples. Her great dark eyes were tear-filled and frightened. "Sssh," he whispered. "Let the panic go, love. I said I'll find her and I will. You can trust me on that. You can trust me on anything. Gentle, now. Rest." He loosened her scarf and unb.u.t.toned her coat. He caressed the line of her jaw with his knuckles. "You make her some dinner and keep it warm on the cooker. She'll be eating it sooner than you can know. I promise." He touched her lips and her cheeks. "Promise."

She swallowed. "Colin."

"Promise. You can trust me."

"I know that. You're so good to us."

"As I mean to be forever." He kissed her gently. "Will you be all right now, love?"

"I...Yes. I'll wait. I won't leave." She lifted his hand, pressed it against her lips. Then her forehead creased. She drew him into the light of the entry. "You've hurt yourself," she said. "Colin, what have you done to your face?"

"Nothing that you need to worry about," he said. "Ever," and he kissed her again.

When she'd watched him drive off, when the sound of the Rover's engine faded and was replaced by the night wind creaking in the trees, Juliet let the pea jacket fall from her shoulders and left it in a heap by the front cottage door. She dropped her scarf on top of it. She kept on her gloves.

These she examined. They were made of old leather lined with rabbit fur, the skin feather-smooth with the years she had worn them, a thread unravelling along the inner right wrist. She pressed them against her cheeks. The leather was cool but she could feel nothing of her face's temperature through the gloves, so it was much like being touched by someone else, like having her face cupped with tenderness, with love, with amus.e.m.e.nt, or with anything else that hinted remotely at romantic attachment.

That's what had started all this in the first place: her need for a man. She'd managed to avoid the need for years by keeping herself and her daughter isolated-just Mummy and Maggie taking on the human race in one part of the country or another. She'd diverted both the interior longing and the dull pain of desire by throwing her energies into Maggie, because Maggie was what her life was all about.

Juliet knew she had bought and paid for this night's anguish in coin she had minted from a part of her make-up that had never failed to give her grief. Wanting a man, hungering to touch the hard fierce angles of his body, longing to lie beneath him-to straddle or to kneel-and to feel that moment's delight in their bodies' joining...These were the voids that had started her on this current path to disaster. So it was utterly fitting that physical desire, which she had never been able to eradicate completely no matter how many years she refused to acknowledge it, should be what had brought her to losing Maggie tonight.

There were dozens of if only's barking in her head, but she fastened on one of them because, although she wanted to do so, she couldn't lie to herself about its importance. She had to accept her involvement with Colin as the prime mover behind everything that had happened with Maggie.

She'd heard about him from Polly long before she'd ever seen him. And she'd thought herself secure in the belief that since Polly was herself in love with the man, since he was so many years her own junior, since she rarely saw him-indeed, since she rarely saw anyone now that they'd found what she'd come to believe was an ideal location to get on with their lives at last-she stood little chance of involvement or attachment. Even when he came to the cottage that day on his official business and she saw him parked by the lavender on the lane and read the bleak despair on his face and recalled Polly's story about his wife, even when she felt the ice of her detached composure receive its first rift in the face of his sorrow and for the first time in years she recognised a stranger's pain, she'd not considered the danger he presented to the weakness in herself that she believed she had mastered.

It was only when he was inside the cottage and she saw him looking round at the frivolous fittings of the kitchen with such ill-disguised yearning that she felt her heart stir. At first, getting ready to pour them each a gla.s.s of her homemade wine, she'd looked round herself to try to understand what was moving him. She knew it couldn't be the superficials-cooker, table, chairs, cupboards-and she wondered at the fact that the rest might be touching him in some way. Could a man be moved by a rack of spices, African violets in the window, jars on the work top, two loaves of bread left to cool, a rack of washed dishes, a tea towel hanging from a drawer to dry? Or was it the finger-painted and oft-moved picture affixed with Blu-Tack to the wall above the cooker: two skirt-wearing stick figures-one with b.r.e.a.s.t.s that looked like lumps of coal-surrounded by flowers as tall as themselves and surmounted by the words I love you, Mummy in a five-year-old's hand. He'd looked at it, looked at her, looked away, and finally didn't seem to know where to look at all.

Poor man, she had thought. And that had been her downfall. She knew about his wife, she began to speak, and she'd not been able to turn back from that moment. Sometime during their conversation, she'd thought just this once oh G.o.d to have a man that way just this once one more time he's so hurting and if I control it if I'm the one if it's only his pleasure with no thought of my own can it be such a wrong, and as he asked her about the shotgun and why she had used it and how, she had watched his eyes. She answered, keeping everything brief and to the point. And when he would have left-all information having been gathered, and thank you, madam, for your time-she decided to show him the pistol to keep him from going. She shot it and waited for him to react, to take it from her, to touch her hand as he removed it from her grip, but he wouldn't, he kept the distance between them, and she realised with a sudden dawning of wonder that he was thinking those very same words just this once oh G.o.d just this once.

It wouldn't be love, she decided, because she was those ugly, gaping ten years older than he, because they didn't even know each other and had not spoken before this day, because the religion she'd long ago forsaken declared that love didn't grow from allowing the needs of the flesh to dominate the needs of the soul.

She held on to those thoughts as that first afternoon together wore on, believing herself safe from loving. This would just be for pleasure, she decided, and then it would be forgotten.

She should have recognised the extent of the danger he represented when she looked at the clock on her bedside table and realised that more than four hours had pa.s.sed and she'd not even thought about Maggie. She should have ended it there-the moment guilt rushed in to replace the sleepy peace that accompanied her o.r.g.a.s.ms. She should have closed her heart and cut him out of her life with something abrupt and potentially hurtful like you're almost a decent f.u.c.k for a copper. But instead she'd said, "Oh my G.o.d," and he'd known. He'd said, "I've been selfish. You're worried about your daughter. Let me clear out. I've kept you far too long. I've..." When he stopped speaking, she didn't look his way, but she felt his hand graze her arm. "I don't know how to name what I felt," he said, "or what I feel. Except that being with you like that...it wasn't enough. It's not even enough now. I don't know what that means."

She should have said drily, "It means you were randy, Constable. We both were. We still are in fact." But she didn't. She listened to him dressing and tried to work up something curt and unmistakably final with which to dismiss him. When he sat on the edge of the bed and turned her to him with his face caught somewhere between wonder and fear, she had the opportunity to draw the line. But she didn't. Instead, she listened to him say, "Can I love you this quickly, Juliet Spence? Just like that? In an afternoon? Can my life change like that?"

And because she knew more than anything else that life can change irrevocably in the instant one is forced to realise its malicious caprice, she said, "Yes But don't."

"What?"

"Love me. Or let your life change."

He didn't understand. He couldn't, really. He thought, perhaps, she was being coy. He said, "No one has control over that," and when his hand moved slowly down her body and her body rose eagerly to meet it against her will, she knew he was right. He phoned her that night long after midnight, saying, "I don't know what this is. I don't know what to call it. I thought if I heard your voice...Because I've never felt...But that's what men say, isn't it? I've never felt like this before so let me get into your knickers and test the feeling out another time or two. And it's that, I won't lie, but it goes beyond and I don't know why."

She had played the fool in the biggest way because she loved being loved by a man. Even Maggie couldn't stop her: not with her white-faced knowledge-unspoken when she entered the cottage not five minutes after Colin's initial departure, with her cat in her arms and her cheeks fresh-scrubbed from where she'd been brus.h.i.+ng tears away; not with her silent appraisal of Colin when he came to dinner or took them for hikes with his dog on the moors; not with her shrill pleas not to be left alone when Juliet went for an hour or two to be with Colin in his house. Maggie couldn't stop her. And she didn't really need to do so because Juliet knew there was no hope of permanency. She understood from the first that each minute was a memory stored against a future in which he and the love of him had no place. She merely forgot that while she had lived for the moment for so many years-on the edge of a tomorrow that always promised to bring the worst upon them-she'd made sure to create a life for Maggie that appeared normal. So Maggie's fears of Colin's permanent intrusion were real. To explain to her that they were also groundless would be to tell her things that would destroy her world. And while Juliet couldn't bring herself to do that, she couldn't bring herself to let Colin go either. Another week, she would think, please G.o.d just give me another week with him and I'll end it between us, I promise I will.

So she had bought this evening. How well she knew it.

Like mother, like daughter in the end, Juliet thought. Maggie's s.e.x with Nick Ware was more than just an adolescent's way of striking back at her mother; it was more than just a search for a man she could call daddy in the darkest part of her mind; it was the blood in her veins declaring itself at last. Yet Juliet knew that she might have been able to forestall the inevitable had she herself not taken up with Colin and given her daughter an example to follow.

Juliet drew off the leather gloves a finger at a time and dropped them onto the pea jacket and scarf that lay heaped on the floor. She went not to the kitchen to prepare a dinner that her daughter wouldn't eat, but to the stairs. She paused at the bottom with one hand on the banister, trying to gather the energy to climb. This stairway was a duplication of so many others over the years: worn carpeting on the flooring, nothing on the walls. She had always thought of pictures on the walls as one more thing to have to remove when they left a cottage, so there never seemed to be a point to hanging any up in the first place. Keep it plain, keep it simple, keep it functional. Following that credo, she had always refused to decorate in a way that might encourage affection for a set of rooms in which they lived. She wanted there to be no sense of loss when they moved on.

Another adventure, she'd called each move, let's see what's what in Northumberland. She'd tried to make a game out of running. It was only when she'd stopped running that she'd lost.

She mounted the stairs. A perfect sphere of dread seemed to be growing beneath her heart.

Why did she run, Juliet wondered, what did they tell her, what does she know?

The door to Maggie's room was partially closed, and she swung it open. Moonlight shone through the branches of the lime tree outside the window and fell in a wavy pattern across the bed. On this Maggie's cat was curled, head buried deeply between his paws, feigning sleep so that Juliet would take pity and not displace him. Punkin had been the first compromise Juliet had made with Maggie. Please, please c'n I have a kitten, Mummy had been such a simple request to grant. What she had not understood at the time was that seeing the joy of one small wish granted led inexorably to the longing to grant others. They'd been little nothings at first-a dossround with her girlfriends, a trip to Lancaster with Josie and her mum-but they'd led to a budding sense of belonging that Maggie had never experienced before. In the end, they had led to the request to stay. Which, along with everything else, led to Nick, to the vicar, and to this night...

Juliet sat on the edge of the bed and switched on the light. Punkin buried his head deeper in his paws although the tip of his tail twitched once to betray him. Juliet ran her hand over his head and along the mobile curve of his spine. He wasn't as clean as he ought to be. He spent too much time prowling about the wood. Another six months and he'd no doubt be more feral than tame. Instinct, after all, was instinct.

On the floor next to Maggie's bed lay her thick sc.r.a.pbook, its cover worn and cracked and its pages so dog-eared that their edges were crumbling to flakes in places. Juliet picked it up and rested it on her lap. A gift for her sixth birthday, it had Maggie's Important Events printed in large block letters in her own hand on the first page. Juliet could tell by the feel of the book that most of the pages were full. She'd never looked through it before-it had seemed too like an invasion of Maggie's small, private world-but she looked through it now, driven not so much by curiosity as by a need to feel her daughter's presence and to understand.

The first part comprised childhood mementos: a tracing of a large hand with a smaller one traced inside it and the words Mumy and me scrawled below; a fanciful composition about "My Doggie Fred" upon which a teacher had written "And what a lovely pet he must be, Margaret" across the top; a programme for a Christmas music recital at which she had been part of a chorus of children who sang -very badly but ambitiously-the Alleluia Chorus from Handel's Messiah; a second-place ribbon from a science project on plants; and scores of pictures and postcards of their camping holidays together on the Hebrides, on Holy Island, far from the crowds in the Lake District. Juliet flipped through the pages. She touched her fingertips to the drawing, traced the edge of the ribbon, and studied each picture of her daughter's face. This was a real history of their lives, a collection that spoke of what she and her daughter had managed to build upon a foundation of sand.

The second part of the sc.r.a.pbook, however, spoke of the cost of having lived that same history. It comprised a collection of newspaper clippings and magazine articles about automobile racing. Interspersed among these were photographs of men. For the first time, Juliet saw that he died in a car crash, darling had a.s.sumed heroic proportions in Maggie's imagination, and from Juliet's reticence on the subject had sprung a father whom Maggie could love. Her fathers were the winners at Indianapolis, at Monte Carlo, at Le Mans. They spun out in flames on a track in Italy, but they walked away with their heads held high. They lost wheels, they crashed, they broke open champagne and waved trophies in the air. They all shared the single quality of being alive.

Juliet closed the book and rested her hands on its cover. It was all about protection, she said inside her head to a Maggie who wasn't there. When you're a mother, Maggie, the last thing you can bear of all the things that you have to bear anyway is losing your child. You can bear just about anything else and you usually have to at one time or another-losing your possessions, your home, your job, your lover, your husband, even your way of life. But losing a child is what will break you. So you don't take risks that might lead to the loss because you're always aware that the one risk you take might be the one that will cause all the horrors in the world to sweep into your life.

You don't know this yet, darling, because you haven't experienced that moment when the twisting squeezing crush of your muscles and the urge to expel and to scream at once results in this small ma.s.s of humanity that squalls and breathes and comes to rest against your stomach, naked to your nakedness, dependent upon you, blind at that moment, hands instinctively trying to clutch. And once you close those fingers round one of your own...no, not even then...once you look at this life that you've created, you know you'll do anything, suffer anything, to protect it. Mostly for its own sake you protect, of course, because all it is really is living, breathing need. But partly you protect it for your own.

And that is the greatest of my sins, darling Maggie. I reversed the process and I lied in doing it because I couldn't face the immensity of loss. But I'll tell the truth now, here, and to you. What I did I did partly for you, my daughter. But what I did all those years ago, I did mostly for myself.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO.