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After she had stopped being A A, she had never told the story of that night to anyone After soto it in the dark and quiet nights of sleepless recollection, she discovered that telling it to Brian had torn her down harder and farther than she had expected

Knees and hands against the earth, she hung her head, for it was heavier than stone, and the sounds she made were more efforts to draw breath than they were sobs She had hen recounting the death of Nickie, Misericordiæ’s mascot Now tears seemed not to be an adequate expression of the loss of her second Nickie Perhaps the only way to honor such a loss would be to have died that night with her daughter

She sat on the yellow grass, legs crossed, almost in the lotus position, except that she clutched her knees with her hands and still hung her head She rocked slowly back and forth

Once she had read that meditation was the path to serenity; but she never meditated She knew that inevitably ht, to the same unanswerable questions, the one why and the thousand what-ifs

She had prayer instead, and it sustained her She prayed for her daughter, for James and Ellen, for Lisbeth and Caroline She prayed for the dogs, all the dogs, for the a

After a while, A aardly forty feet aith Nickie on a leash Clearly, he wasn’t sure that giving her ti, but of course it was

She loved him for his occasional aardness, his hesitations, his doubts, his self-consciousness

Michael Cogland had been always self-assured and smooth and confident in any context But what had seeloss of a man who had never been inhibited by so olden fro raced into her arms

After a hesitation, alawky as a boy, Brian ca an aard silence, he said, "Dogs’ lives are short, too short, but you know that going in You know the pain is coreat anguish, so you live fully in the ht in her innocence, because you can’t support the illusion that a dog can be your lifelong companion There’s such beauty in the hard honesty of that, in accepting and giving love while always aware it cos is a e do penance for all the other illusions we allow ourselves and for the mistakes we make because of those illusions"

Dear God, she heard nothing aard in that In that was the perfect truth of her eight years in rescue, as she could never have put it into words

For a ti, on this living Nickie, the affection they felt for each other

"Michael fled the country," she said at last, needing to finish the account "They never found hientina, he had established quite an alibi in Buenos Aires His friends there swore he’d been with theht Of course that wouldn’t work after I’d seen hi to a lie known to be a lie, when swearing to it didn’tand by fathering a child, Michael had no further use for a family By laife had a claim on a portion of his wealth, as did a child Amy and Nicole were not assets, but liabilities, and he needed to purge them from his books

He could have hired so job, but he must have worried that a paid killer would have no scruples about engaging in blackested that Michael had done the deed not solely to avoid being vulnerable to extortion, but also because killing gave him pleasure

The police discovered he had prepared for the possibility that he htly woven alibi In the three years preceding the night, he had gradually transferred h a coned to launder it and fold it away under an alternate identity that could never be traced

Devastated by the actions of their son, the senior Coglands had been kind to Ahter But her taste for luxury had been lost, and the lifestyle in which she once delighted now appealed to her no ar and ashes

Amy had cashed out what coed assets as their houses Even that felt too much like bloodto do with her life that would ain

Michael’s cold calculation and the extreued that he would not re in the sun with piña coladas for the rest of his life By fighting back, she had forced hiuratively, she had wounded hi that fills the void He ht feel that the wound she’d dealt to his pride required payback, and in ti for her

Consequently, her attorney was able to convince the court that the government needed to assist her in the creation of a new identity and forever seal the records involving her nae

She had lived as Aotten the last name pinned to her shirt when she’d been abandoned in the church at Mater Misericordiæ Redwing

She was quite sure she had never edy eined by Dickens Rather than the full truth with all the melodrama of her abandonment, and rather than present herself as a woe, she had preferred a white lie of o hione to the orphanage only after their death

Her attorney and the judge preferred she create a new name froht of a life without any touchstones to her past The nuns at Misericordiæ cooperated by redacting the na from their records, and as best they could from memory

She had, then, also lost the sisters who had raised her Until Michael was found, if ever he was, A; for a visit

She had corief, gnawed thin, and a prisoner of loneliness, who for most of a year could find no way to escape her cell

Then one day, slipping her locket around her neck, re sweet Nickie who had come to her out of an autuood breeder She bought two puppies

Fred and Ethel had brought hope back into her life With hope she could again consider what ht have, and so she founded Golden Heart

Now in the witheredVanessa had further directions They were less than an hour fro Hope back into Brian’s life

Chapter 60

The single-lane blacktop led half aat the sie

If the pearly fog grew thicker, even in daylight the white gate ht be hard to see in spite of the red reflectors affixed to it In the headlights, a line of those ovals glittered as if the gate were a trophy rack rim put down the driver’sand pressed the button on the call post

After only a short delay, Harrow replied "Who’s there?"

"It’s Billy"