"Yes," quietly. "I know." He's thinking of Aornis, certainly, but also of being Damien and Laurel, of the incomparable frustration of knowing there was something missing. A speckled band. A kindness extended to him and perhaps no one else. He doesn't know whether that means it was a joke, the kind of trick from the nightmare she'd sent him (a cruelty disguised as a kindness, not unlike God's favor), or whether he was beneath her notice and only sometimes approached too close to the fight she was trying to have and was struck unintentionally. He can't even remember her face without looking at the picture in his sketchbook.

He's visited her graveside twice now to to try to sort through his thoughts, but they're still tangled, the threads unspooled and snarled together.