Page 7 (1/1)

Back in Cottage 7, I take a long hot shower even though I showered earlier, between leaving Hiskott’s house and returning to burn it down

Raphael stays the night withis a coolden retriever comforts me, and perhaps Boo coine I leave a lamp on, but I do not drea to Raphael snore, and I findwhat it means to be fallen We are fallen in a broken world, and one thing that occurs to me is that after thousands of years, e think of fallen angels, we think of the misery on Earth But the universe in its immensity is nevertheless of a piece, and what applies at one end of it applies at the other No doubt hout the stars The alien artifacts housed in Fort Wyvern are of extraterrestrial origin, but perhaps they are at the same time part of the ancient history of hu, and afterward take a call froreed earlier that he will stay in touch with Jolie and be her secret friend, but that he will not again allow her through that last pair of steel doors, into Wyvern We say our good-byes His last words toand prosper" Mine to hihs

Leaving, Annamaria drives the Mercedes we have borrowed froth of blacktop leading to the county road, thirty-sixfor us, which I wish they would not have done Jolie stands with her mother and father and her uncle Donny at the end of the line She waves I wave

The Coast Highway takes us south toill prove to be a place called Roseland, which will be far worse than Harmony Corner in its worst days In Roseland, I will have to put Jolie entirely out of my mind, for to think of her, in all her vulnerability, out there in this world of corruption, would perhaps paralyze me And I have work to do