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Clair lowered her ca orders from anyone, even your own mother”

“I would have given her anything,” he said with a gruff thread of torture weaving through his tone “I couldn’t give her what she really wanted—my father’s life back I worked ahead and was in ori hired me Mybesides pancakes I gave her that much, at least, before she withered away”

His bitter self-recriain, but she was learning He would talk a little, but only if they kept it to the facts

“Cancer?” she guessed, unable to help being affected by his loss He gave an abbreviated nod and she ic”

“It was suicide,” he bit out “She knew so and didn’t seek treat—” His jaw bit into the word “But she felt like a burden on me” His hand opened, empty and draped with futility before he shoved it into his pocket “And she wanted to be with my father”

Clair caught a sharp breath, frozen with the need to offer him coht now

“She must have loved him very much,” she murmured, voice involuntarily husky

“She was shattered by his death Broken” His gaze fixed on a sculpture that had fallen over and splintered into a inal for her like that Hated knowing I—” He cut hih he’d just come back into himself “Are you finished here?”

Clair huddled in the constricting layer of her jacket, aching for Aleksy even as she silently willed hi he needed to exorcise a particularly cruel de too connected to hinore his terrible pain

Carefully stowing her camera in her pocket, she put her hand on his aret through to him

“I’m sure you did what you could Don’t bla you couldn’t control,” she said

“Who else is there to blaaze that struck hers like a mallet before he yanked it away