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He almost couldn’t hear her She had said if She’d said she could forgive him He didn’t knohat to do with that confused, painful ju his chin She tilted his face up so that heto do that"

He’d never thought of the future until now He’d flinched from it all these years It had seemed as impossible to unravel as his past

But when he shut his eyes, he didn’t think of a dark cellar He re just yesterday

We’re that sort of friends, Patrick had insisted

And they were Stephen and Patrick had been the constants in his life, the two people he had never forgotten They were fixed They were not a lie They’d not betrayed him, and he…

How odd He hadn’t betrayed them either It took himthat bewildering thought in his head, over and over, trying to iine what it ot out the notebook he always carried He drew to remember--to recall all the details that his inconsistent, unreliable memory washed away Over the months, he’d drawn a hundred sketches of Free He started one now--one of her standing in front of her press as she’d greeted hihts past? It was He drew her skirts, ruffling in a breeze, her eyes, brightening in recognition

Like every other sketch he’dso fundaht if he didn’t figure it out now

He wracked his ainst the doors of her business That rong Empty

She hadn’t been alone Slowly, he drew in the lines of his own trousers, the tilt of his head as he’d walked up to her His outstretched hands--that brilliant smile on her face now seemed to make sense

It had never been her that he’d drawn incorrectly

The thing that he had beenon that rock in the sunshine long after she’d gone back to the house He worked until the sun switched froht side The breeze came and went, the water rippled past

When he was ready, he stood and went back to the house Marshall let hi at the table

She didn’t rise as he approached her She didn’t frown at him, but she didn’t smile either He wasn’t sure how he made his way toward her, if anyone else was in the rooht except that he no longer wanted to be towering over her, looking down

It was a siet on his knees before her, and an even simpler matter to bend his head

"Free," he said "I want to ht moment, she didn’t respond And then, ever so slowly, she reached out and took his hands in hers

"We’ll figure it out," she told him

Chapter Twenty-Four

FREE DID NOT KNOW what she was doing in this house, if one could call sos reached high over her head Her footsteps in the huge, echoing space seeer creature A horse, perhaps, or an elephant