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At the other end of the rooame show

No traffic accident had killed Ji a recounting of the terrible truth

She had known She had known, and refused to know

Her latest drea prophecy but another memory that Jim had projected into her mind as they had both slept She had not been herself in the dream She had been Jio If a iven her a look at her face, she would have seen Jim’s countenance instead of her own, as she had seen Lena’s in the windmillThe horror of the blood-drenched restaurant returned to her now in vivid ies that she could not block from memory, and she shuddered violently

She looked toward the , the courtyard, frightened for hi for a week at a club in Atlanta," Henry said

"They went out for lunch to Jimmy’s favorite place, which he remembered fro, Holly said, "Who was the gun to it Just a crazy man"

"How many people died?" "A lot"

"HowJih the shattered bodies of the other custo with the stench of blood and vohtered corpses She heard the heavy sound of the autoain, chuda-chuda-chuda-chuda-chuda-chuda, and the please-please-please-please of the terrified young waitress Even as a dream, it had been almost beyond endurance, all the random horror of existence and all the cruelty of hue ordeal froical recovery, even for an adult, would take a lifetiht seem impossible, reality intolerable, denial necessary, and fantasy the only tool hich to hold on to a shred of sanity

"Jiotten there a few seconds later, Jimmy wouldn’t have rip tightened slightly on Holly’s hand "They found Jim in a corner, in Jamie’s lap, in his daddy’s lap, his daddy’s arms, all covered withwith his daddy’s blood"

Holly reht at her, knocking tables and chairs aside, so she scrambles away and into a corner, on top of a dead body, and the crazyun, she can’t bear to look at him the way the waitress looked at him and then died, so she turns her face to the corpse -and she re in revulsion

If she’d had time to look into the face of the corpse, she would have seen Jih the recreation rooain It was louder this time A couple of the ambulatory residents went to the fireplace to see if any birds were caught behind the damper in the chimney

"In his daddy’s blood," Henry repeated softly It was clear that, even after all these years, the consideration of that moment was intolerably painful to him

The boy had not only been in his dead father’s ar the ruins, and that he was orphaned, alone

Jim sat on a redwood bench in the Fair Haven courtyard He was alone

For a day late in August, when the seasonal drought should have been at its peak, the sky was unusually heavy with unshed moisture, yet it looked like an inverted bowl of ashes Mixes of late-su beds onto the wide concrete ays, werehalf their color without the enhancement of sunshine The trees shivered as if chilled by thebad was co to Holly’s theory, told hi would come unless he caused it to appear He only had to control himself, and they would all survive

But he still felt it co

He heard the screaky cries of birds

The birds had fallen silent, After a while Holly let go of Henry Ironheart’s hand, took some Kleenex from her purse, blew her nose, and blotted her eyes When she could speak, she said, "He blames himself for what happened to his mom and dad"

"I know He always did He’d never talk about it, but there ays it showed, how he blaht he should have saved them"

"But why? He was only ten years old, a srown un For God’s sake, how could he feel responsible?" For the one out of Henry’s eyes His poor lopsided face, already pulled down to the right, was pulled down farther by an inexpressible sadness

At last he said, "I talked to him about it lots of times, took him on my lap and held him and talked about it, like Lena did, too, but he was so much locked in himself, wouldn’t open up, wouldn’t say why he blamed himself hated himself" Holly looked at her watch

She had left Ji

But she could not interrupt Henry Ironheart in the middle of the revelations that she had co years," Henry continued, "and ured it out a little But by the tirown up, and we’d stopped talking about Atlanta so o

To be co by then"

"So what is it you figured out?" Henry put his weak right hand in his strong left and stared down at the gnarled lumps that his knuckles made within his time-thinned skin From the old man’s attitude, Holly sensed that he was not sure he should reveal what he needed and wanted to reveal

"I love him, Henry"

He looked up and met her eyes

She said, "Earlier you said I’d come here to learn about Atlanta because Jiht I cas, because he’s frozen me out of some areas of his life He really loves me, Henry, I’ve no doubt of that, but he’s clenched up like a fist, he can’t let loose of certain things

If I’ to coot to know all about him-or we’ll never have a chance to be happy You can’t build a life together on ht"

"Tellhiot to knohat you know"

He sighed and ot to say will sound like superstitious nonsense, but it isn’t I’ll make it simple and short, ’cause it sounds even screwier if I dress it up at all My wife, Lena, had a power

Presentiuess Not that she could see the future, tell you ould win a horserace or where you’d be a year fro like that But soht invite her to a picnic Sunday a week, and without thinking, she’d say it was going to rain like-for-Noah cohbor would be pregnant, and Lena would start referring to the baby as either a he’ or a she,’ when there was no way for her to knohich it would be-and she was always right"

Holly sensed so into place

When Henry gave her a maybe-you-think-I’m-an-old-fool look, she took his bad hand and held it reassuringly

After studying her aspecial Jiic?" "Yes"