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And he’d felt her hand in his Only once

In the hospital He’d coh the pain and the dark to that foreign but gentle touch He knew it didn’t belong to his wife, Enid That bird-like grip he would not have coe, and certain, and warm And it invited hi at him with such concern Why would she be there, he’d wondered And then he knehy

Because she had nowhere else to be No other hospital bed to sit beside

Because her father was dead Killed by a gunman in the abandoned factory Beauvoir had seen it happen Seen Gamache hit Seen him lifted off his feet and fall to the concrete floor

And lie still

And now Annie Ga his hand in the hospital, because the hand she really wanted to be holding was gone

Jean Guy Beauvoir had pried his eyes open and seen Annie Ga so sad And his heart broke Then he saw so else

Joy

No one had ever looked at him that way With unconcealed and unbound joy

Annie had looked at him like that, when he’d opened his eyes

He’d tried to speak but couldn’t But she’d rightly guessed what he was trying to say

She’d leaned in and whispered into his ear, and he could shtly citrony Clean and fresh Not Enid’s clinging, full-bodied perfurove in summer

"Dad’s alive"

He’d e for hie baths But none was more personal, more intimate, more of a betrayal than what his broken body did then

He cried

And Annie saw And Annie never mentioned it from that day to this

To Henri’s baffle’s ears and placed one hand on the other, in a gesture that had become habitual now

That was how it had felt Annie’s hand on his

This was all he’d ever have of her His boss’s hter