She must have seen the despair on his face, because she moved back over to him and placed a hand on his leg. He couldn’t even look at her.“Everybody makes mistakes, Ray,” she said, her voice very low and gentle. He’d heard her talk to the baby in this tone. “Everybody stumbles. It’s what you do then that makes or breaks your life. It’s what you do after you fall that’s the measure of who you are.”He left the room then. She called after him quietly, but he kept walking. He walked out onto his back porch and gazed up at the sky. He didn’t want to be in the same room with her. He couldn’t stand for her to see him cry.“What’s going on?” Harrison was snapped back to the present by Ella’s voice. She stood in the open doorway looking different somehow, a little angry maybe. She looked fit and strong dressed in jeans and a black T-shirt, sneakers on her feet. She didn’t se

“With provisions you could live out here forever,” Marlowe told me a lifetime ago. I never imagined I would be here again, not like this.From the bank of the creek, I call his name. The sound of it fills the night. Silence is the only answer. I am about to call again when he emerges from the trees behind the trailer.Though he is just a shape in the darkness, I know him. He is not the man I remember. He approaches me, leaning heavily upon a cane and dragging the right side of his body. He moves slowly, as though every step causes him pain. When he draws closer, I can see that he is hideously disfigured, the left side of his face little more than an explosion of skin. I find myself recoiling, moving backward as he moves forward. Those eyes are the same black sinkholes in which I have drowned again and again.I realize that my entire body is quavering, every muscle tense, every nerve ending electrified. I can’t believe I am looking at him, that

“Annie,” he says, putting his hand on my forehead. He releases a heavy sigh, and I see tears spring to his eyes before he covers them, embarrassed. My lungs feel heavy and my head aches, but I have never been happier to see any two people.“He’s dead,” I try to tell Gray, but my throat feels thick and sore. My voice comes out in a croak. “He’s gone.”He shakes his head and looks confused, as if he isn’t sure what I’m talking about. He kisses me on the forehead. “Try to relax,” he says.“Mom, you’ve been sleeping for a long time,” Victory tells me. “Like days.”I look at her perfect face - her saucer eyes and Cupid’s - bow mouth, the milky skin, the silky, golden puff of her hair - and lift my weak arms to hold her. I feel waves of relief pump through my body. She’s mine. She’s safe. Victory.“Are you all right, Victory?&rdqu

How easily it’s all explained away.Simon Briggs: He was a predator who discovered somehow that Lolita still lived. He didn’t work for anyone else, and he needed money. He’d come back to blackmail us, knowing we had to keep my identity a secret. Who killed him? Of course we know it was Gray. As far as the police are concerned, it could have been any of a number of his enemies or dissatisfied clients. When you live a life like Briggs’s, there’s almost no other way to die than beneath a bridge with a bullet in your brain. What about poor Dr. Brown? Authorities were just about to catch up with the unlicensed doctor. He was facing fines and jail time. He packed up his office and fled. He’d done it before, in New York and California. What I saw? Well…we can’t put much stock in that, can we? And who might have killed him? An angry patient, maybe - who knows what kind of associations a man like that might have?The

I find myself at the Internet café by the beach. I order myself a latte and grab a spot in a booth toward the back, start browsing the Web on one of the laptops. I have thought about trying to find some proof of the things that happened to me. But, it turns out, I don’t really need anyone to believe me. I know what happened. I know I’m not crazy. I know that I faced Marlowe Geary and removed him from the world. I am healed by this knowledge. That should be enough. Whatever Alan Parker and Grief Intervention Services did to cover everything up is not my problem. I have tried to reach my father to talk to him about that night, without luck. I’m starting to worry about him.My fingers hover over the keyboard. I think about searching for a way to contact Alan Parker, to look for stories of other people who have been involved with Grief Intervention Services, or to try to reach my father again without Gray around. There’s a pay phone over by the bath