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"One of these prefects apparentlyan interest in my brother when he was only about ten He was asleep in his dormitory bed when the older boy caht sleeper The older boy spent six weeks in the hospital before dying of an infection brought on by his injuries"

Suzanne gasped and nearly dropped the seedling in her hands

"Father Stearns killed a boy?"

"Boy? I suppose The older boy was fifteen And had a reputation for being the worst of the offenders at the school The school knew that No one pressed charges against my brother They covered it all up and sent him back home to us"

Suzanne walked away fros Father Stearns as a boy of only ten had beaten and subsequently killed a fifteen-year-old boy at his school

"I re my mother the story That monster was proud of my brother Ten years old and my brother beats into a coma a boy five years older and fifty pounds heavier Proud My father the rast, proud of his son for killing a pedophile Oh, the irony I’ll tell you more if you promise you can handle it, if you promise it’s off the record I have two sons I don’t want this nighteneration"

Suzanne turned back around although she instantly regretted it

"There’s more?"

Elizabeth raised her chin in a kind of defiance, nearly daring Suzanne to tell her to stop or to walk away And she would have…should have But she couldn’t

"Tellcan, refilled it and startedoutside my father’s office when I heard hiht sleeper, my brother who’d nearly killed a boy with his bare hands And then my brother came home I hadn’t seen hiain after all that tie Aard He didn’t seeer than me, but seemed so much older He was such a beautiful bastard even then And so quiet, unapproachable He scared the hell out of ht he could kill me the way he did that boy In fact--" Elizabeth paused for a breath "--I hoped he would"

The August evening heat in the greenhouse was so oppressive Suzanne thought she ht faint from it But when Elizabeth spoke those last four words, she felt cold chills run through her body