Page 6 of The Children of Eve (Charlie Parker #22)

CHAPTER VI

To the north, in Scarborough, the bedroom door was ajar. The girl stood on the threshold and regarded the sleeping figures: the woman on her right side, her back to the girl’s father; and he, also on his right side, his left arm outside the comforter, his hand resting on the woman’s exposed shoulder.

You have forgotten who you are , the girl thought. It cannot last .

Her father’s eyes opened. He sat up and looked toward the door. Delicately, so as not to wake the woman, he pushed aside the comforter and stepped from the bed. He was naked from the waist up, and despite the dimness, the girl could make out the healed wounds, the physical evidence of torments that ran older and deeper than even he could recall.

“Jennifer?”

He whispered her name, and there was such tenderness to it, such longing, that she wanted to run to him. He would hold her against him, and she would feel safe.

Feel safe: Another illusion, because feeling and being were not the same. The girl and her mother had learned that to their cost. He had not been able to protect them, and they had died for it. She did not blame him. The forces ranged against him, against all three of them, were more powerful than they could have imagined. Had he been with them that night, he too would have been killed.

Again.

Why don’t you remember? All those lives, all the torment. All the punishment.

Her father walked toward the door, only to pause on his side of the gap.

You have made recompense over and over, but still it’s not enough, and it never will be. That’s why it has to come to an end. We will bring it to an end, together.

“JENNIFER.”

I spoke the name again to the dark, but now there was only absence.

She was gone.