Twilight’s Last Gleaming

Disclaimer: Characters and situations from Buffy the Vampire Slayer are property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, Kuzui Enterprises, Sandollar Television, the WB, and UPN.

Part III

The next morning Jack bought a heavy rubber-headed mallet at a hardware store, and sat in his car in the parking lot, using his pocket knife to sharpen two of the legs from the broken oak chair into hardwood stakes. Once he was done he put all three implements into a small gym bag, and started for the next point in his itinerary.

Loryn, of course, knew nothing of this. He had left her in his apartment that morning, going out on some pretext so flimsy that he couldn’t even remember what it was. Not that it made much difference; she had been barely conscious, almost totally drained by the transition from vampirism back to life. They had waited for sunrise with the blinds open, hoping the slow dawn would be less taxing than the unexpected, searing exposure of the morning before. And so it had proven, Loryn gradually losing the characteristics of vampirism until with full sunrise she was human again … and almost too weak to stand unaided.

Jack was himself desperately tired. His few hours’ nap the afternoon before had helped, but not much; and the ordeal of sitting up with Loryn, making almost hysterical conversation and constantly avoiding those fathomless eyes, had stretched him to a tension barely short of snapping. Now …

He shook his head and rubbed at eyes that felt rimmed with sand. There were still things to do.

At the same store he had also bought a pair of machinist’s goggles, and now he drew a cross on each lens with a felt-tipped marker. The effect was ludicrous, but he hoped they might shield him from the effects of vampiric hypnotism. They, too, went into the bag. At a grocery store he acquired fresh bulbs of garlic; at a florist, a dozen white roses; at a store for religious books and related goods, a crucifix for his pocket and a second one on a gold chain. As the last item on his schedule, he stopped at a dollar store and bought a pair of twelve-ounce plastic squeeze bottles, then drove back to the church and surreptitiously filled them from the holy water fonts.

He racked his brain for other ideas, but his imagination was as exhausted as the rest of him. If he could just get some sleep … Yes. Right. He swung by a pharmacy and bought a box of No-Doz, and washed down three tablets with cola on the way back to his place.

Despite the variety of preparations he had made, Jack was troubled by a nagging feeling that he was proceeding along the wrong track. He had not been the world’s most accomplished soldier (an engine mechanic in an armored cavalry battalion, closer to combat readiness than a supply clerk but still several steps removed from infantryman level); all the same, living in a military culture for three years had given him some general comprehension of overall strategy, and from that standpoint his current situation didn’t look especially good. He was holding his own from moment to moment; the problem was that he was reacting to circumstances, rather than finding some way to wrest back control. That was never good.

Before the plum assignment in Germany, he had been stationed stateside, and one of his first experiences after completing tech school had been when his battalion took part in a training exercise in the Nevada desert. Rather than the usual inter-unit rivalry, this one had called for a Marine company to act as the opposition forces, and from Jack’s perspective the entire exercise was a disaster. A Marine scouting party had captured the communications center the first night; by the end of the third day, there were no longer any Army forces left in play, and the two-week exercise had been wrapped up and called off with mortifying quickness. Jack had hated the Marines’ cocksure arrogance, all the more infuriating because it was so clearly justified, but he had learned a bitter lesson in the value of intensive training and tactics.

That was what he so badly lacked. Holy water, garlic, trick glasses … he was making it up as he went. Not good enough, not remotely. His options were limited just now; but surely, given time, there must be some better way to prepare for encounters with this heretofore-unsuspected night world. A good reaction plan was essential, but wars were never won by defense alone. There had to be some way to put the opposition on the defensive. To take the initiative.

Jack had thought he could finish his morning errands in thirty minutes, but it had taken three times that long. When he arrived at his apartment he found Loryn asleep on the couch; the soup he had left her, so far as he could see, was untouched. With angry haste he shook her awake, pulling her roughly to her feet. “Damn it, are you trying to kill yourself?” he demanded. “Come on, walk around, eat a little — damn it all!” She sagged in his arms, reaching groggily for the couch.

Jack shifted his grip so he could support her on one arm, and with his free hand he slapped her twice, hard. She rocked back, her eyes wide and shocked, the print of his hand flaring on the side of her face. Loathing himself for striking a woman so cruelly afflicted, he still could see only one way to approach the situation. “I’m going to keep you alive,” he told Loryn thickly, “if I have to beat you black and blue. Now damn it, get over to that table and eat before I punch your face in!”

She staggered to the table, glassy-eyed, and collapsed into a chair. After three swallows she bent suddenly and vomited on the kitchenette linoleum.

“Keep eating,” Jack ordered her when she had recovered. “Your appetite got better yesterday and that’s what it’s going to do now.” Something in her face suggested rebellion, and he added, “I’ll push a tube down your throat and feed you through a funnel if I have to. Do you want that?”

Loryn blinked at him, resistance sliding away, and said, “It’s cold. The soup.”

“Oh. Sorry.” Jack poured the bowl’s contents back into the small pan, and while it was reheating on the rangetop he poured Loryn a glass of orange juice (to which he discreetly added two ounces of holy water from one of the squeeze bottles). She drank, carefully and without further disaster, and he tore off enough paper towels to blot up the mess on the floor.

When the soup had reached a low boil he brought it to her again, and pushed her chair around to put her in the square of light from the window while she ate. It took her a long time, but the combination of sun and nourishment had its effect. By the time Loryn had finished she was fully awake, though still pale. And she must have read his feelings from the expression he tried to hide, for she told him, “Jack, it’s all right. Please, I understand, and you did the right thing. I was so … so …” She broke off and closed her eyes, tears streaking her cheeks. “I’m dying, Jack. I’m dying, and we can’t stop it.”

He came up to stand beside her. “Don’t say that,” he urged, putting a hand on her shoulder. “We’ve got you awake and moving, that’s the main thing. We just have to keep on plugging away.”

“It isn’t enough,” she told him. “Jack, don’t you see? Even if I keep my human mind tonight, even if I survive another sunup … Jack, tomorrow night will be the third night since I died! The time when a vampire is supposed to rise!”

He hadn’t thought of this, and her despair stabbed through him. Only duty and a reflexive defiance kept his face from mirroring the defeat on Loryn’s. “If that’s so, then it means we have until sunset tomorrow to work on this. Last night at the church, you said yourself that it was almost enough, and I’m not close to running out of ideas yet.” He reached down to take her hand, and squeezed it, hard, trying to impart some of the assurance he was feigning. “I won’t let you give up. It’s … unacceptable.”

Loryn shook her head. “I’m tired,” she said. “I’m so tired.” She looked up at Jack. “What kind of ideas?”

“Well, we start with this,” he replied. He went to the door and picked up the sack of supplies he had dropped there on his entrance, returned to pour the contents onto the table. He held out the crucifix on the chain. “Put that on.”

She took it, but her eyes were on the other items. “Flowers?” she wondered. “And bulbs for more flowers?”

“The bulbs are garlic,” he corrected her. “And the flowers are white roses, vampires aren’t supposed to like them. I don’t think they’re as strong as the garlic, and garlic isn’t as potent as a crucifix or holy water, but I wanted to cover all bets.”

Loryn opened the clasp on the chain, and fastened it behind her neck. “I don’t remember seeing anything about roses in the books we checked out.”

“I did, couple of places.” Jack grinned. “But I actually got it from Salem’s Lot.”

She gave him an odd look. “From what?”

“Early Stephen King,” he elaborated. “Must have been seven, eight years ago. Come on, have some more juice.”

One fortunate side-effect of Loryn’s condition (almost the only break they’d gotten since her first morning return to humanity) was that she didn’t suffer from lack of slumber; her recent somnolescence had been the result of weakness rather than cumulative sleeplessness. At Jack’s suggestion she took a cool shower to get her blood moving more briskly; meanwhile he strung half the garlic bulbs onto a loop of dental floss, into which he wove the white roses to make a somewhat overcrowded garland.

Loryn emerged from the bathroom with her hair tied up, saying, “I do feel better, but I don’t have any fresh clothes … and no, none of your stuff would come close to fitting. Can we go back by my dorm so I can at least get clean underwear?”

“Sure,” Jack agreed. “Here, this is for you.”

Loryn inspected the garland, sighed, and settled it around her neck. “I won’t wear this where anybody can see me,” she warned him. “The Sixties are over, and good riddance.”

Sure enough, she left the garland in his car when they reached the campus. Jack walked with her to Fischer Hall, but waited on the stone steps out front while she went in to change. When she came out again, she wore white denim shorts, a sleeveless knit top, and canvas deck shoes. “I ran into someone from Broadcast Studies on the way down,” she said, rejoining him. “I hadn’t really thought about it, but this will be our second day of missed classes.”

Jack whistled. “You’re right. We’d better wrap up this business quick, or we could be in trouble.” He lifted an eyebrow toward her, and she laughed.

Back at the car Loryn replaced the garland without prompting, and asked, “Will we be returning to your apartment, or out to the beach again?”

“Yes to both, but not right away. First I want to stop at the church for awhile.”

She nodded, eyes pensive as she thought it through. “An exorcism?” she ventured at last.

“Not a bad idea,” Jack said, impressed. “I hadn’t thought of that. But no, that would be for demon possession, your case is something entirely different. It just seemed to me, since the church was having an effect on you last night, it couldn’t hurt for you to soak up some more of the atmosphere today.” Plus, he could restock on holy water, Loryn had drunk about half a bottle mixed in with the orange juice.

They parked on the same lot as before, and Jack led the way to the chapel. “Last night we just waited for sunset,” he was saying to her as they approached the door. “I figured today we’d mix in some prayers, light some candles, whatever looks like boosting our chances. That’ll still leave time for the beach …”

He was inside and several steps down the aisle before he realized he was alone. He turned back and saw Loryn standing outside, her expression blank and surprised. “What?” he said, crossing quickly back to catch the closing door. “What is it?”

“I can’t,” she said, with the total calm of one who has just received a shock too great to register. “It’s like at your apartment, night before last. I can’t come in.”

Jack could only stare; this was a possibility that had never occurred to him. “Well, okay, I’m inviting you in.” And then, remembering the line from Dracula: “Enter freely and of your own will.”

Loryn started forward obediently, halted at the threshold. “I’m sorry,” she said with that same frozen composure. “It seems I’m … not welcome.”

“Hold on,” Jack told her. He dipped his fingers into the holy water font, and used them to trace the sign of the cross on Loryn’s forehead, intoning quickly, “In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” At his touch they felt a tiny shock, like a static spark on a cold day; Loryn jerked a little in startlement, but that was all. Jack repeated the procedure on himself, just for safety’s sake, then took hold of Loryn’s hand and pulled her smoothly in through the door.

“That was disturbing,” Loryn said vaguely, finally beginning to show some reaction to her initial exclusion. “I didn’t have any problem coming in yesterday. I must be … further gone now.”

No. He wouldn’t allow pessimism. “We’re tapping into a power source,” he told her. “We still don’t know all the rules, but this proves there really is something at work here. Let’s get what benefit we can from it.”

True to his stated intentions, Jack lit some candles in the little alcove flanking the altar, and tucked a dollar bill into the donations box underneath. “I hope my parents never find out about this,” Loryn observed with grim levity. “I think they may actually believe the Pope is the Antichrist.”

“So we won’t pray to the Pope.” Jack led her to a pew, letting her enter first this time, and settled in beside her. He selected a paperbound missalette from the bookholder on the back of the pew ahead, riffled through the pages. “I’d say we have enough of a selection to keep us occupied for awhile.”

After the drama of their entrance, however, the recitation of prayers from the missalette felt routine, even anticlimactic. They interspersed it with silent individual prayer, though Jack found that difficult; in his current condition, without a formula to follow, it was too easy for him to drift toward sleep. Three times someone else came into the chapel; one went through a Rosary, lips moving as she counted the beads, the others simply knelt for a few minutes and then departed.

Jack had originally planned that they remain for a couple of hours, but by twenty minutes past the first hour it was all he could do to stay awake. He nudged Loryn and they rose, did a passable reproduction of the genuflection to the altar they had observed in the other visitors, and made their departure.

“I don’t feel any different,” Loryn mused, half to herself. “But then, I didn’t feel a difference from yesterday, either, and something must have changed or we wouldn’t have had to … sign me in, I suppose you’d call it.” Jack unlocked the car door on her side first, and she looked to him as she pulled it open. “Beach now?”

“Beach,” Jack agreed. “As soon as we get some lunch supplies from my place, and of course we’ll need your swimsuit again, too.” With relief he found that the walk back to the car had restored some of his alertness, and he was able to drive without zoning out.

At his apartment Loryn gathered towels and made sandwiches while Jack heated up more canned soup, seasoning it with the remaining bulbs of garlic (although, lacking a garlic press, he had to make do with pliers), and poured it up into a thermos when he judged it to have simmered sufficiently. He similarly doctored a half-gallon of orange juice with an entire bottle of holy water, and added the jug to the Styrofoam cooler already half filled with fruit and plastic-wrapped sandwiches. Once he had chosen suitable beachwear for himself, they were ready to go.

During the drive, Loryn startled him by saying abruptly, “I think I may have some idea how all this happened.”

Jack automatically glanced at the Band-Aid on her throat. “How you were changed, you mean?”

“Yes. As I said that first night, I’ve always felt there had to be a connection between my astral wandering and my being … attacked. Coincidences happen, but I still don’t trust them, and what are the odds of a vampire coming after me when I just happened to be out of my body at the time? I don’t think that was accidental.”

“It does seem a little unlikely,” Jack acknowledged. “We couldn’t think how they might be connected, though, and I still can’t.”

“How about this, then?” Loryn said. “We know a vampire can’t enter a home without being invited. We know one got to me somehow. We know I didn’t invite him in because I wasn’t around to give the invitation … but then, in a way I wasn’t there at all. Could my astral absence have somehow left my place psychically open to a vampire, open in a way that he could — sense, the way a shark can sense movement in the water, or a rattlesnake can detect a person’s body heat?”

“It’s plausible,” Jack said slowly. “A lot better than any theories I’ve offered so far, anyhow. But that would mean —”

“It would mean,” Loryn finished for him, “the thing that’s saved me so far is the same thing that put me in this dreadful mess to begin with. Score for life’s little ironies.”

Jack sighed, and fought to keep it from turning into a yawn. “At least it clears away that annoying coincidence stuff.”

At the beach it quickly became obvious that today’s program would not repeat that of the day before. Loryn had no difficulty in following the pace Jack set in the calisthenics workout, and in fact he found his own energy quickly evaporating. “Are you all right?” Loryn asked him as he stumbled to a halt, gasping.

“I’m out on my feet,” he admitted. “I’m sorry, I just can’t keep this up. I feel like such a wimp.”

“You only got four hours’ sleep yesterday,” she pointed out. “And, what, four hours the night before? You already said it, you can’t help me if you can’t stay awake. I’ll do the exercise and juice and sun, you get some rest.”

“Sleep,” he agreed, unable to argue. The No-Doz had long since worn off, and hadn’t really helped that much to begin with. “I’ll, I’ll lie down for awhile and …”

“No, here,” Loryn said, steering him into the shade of a dilapidated pier. “Never go to sleep in the sun. Didn’t you learn that on the beach in Oklahoma?”

“Oh, funny,” Jack said fuzzily, stretching out onto the towel she had laid down for him. He was gone in seconds.

An automobile horn snatched him awake, and for an awful disorienting eternity he couldn’t remember where he was or what was happening. He looked at his watch — twelve minutes past three — and saw Loryn sitting on a second towel some twenty feet away, unhurriedly tugging the straps of the bikini top back up over her shoulders. Jack blinked at her, still not entirely reconnected to reality. “That sound — what —?”

“I was getting a little extra sun,” Loryn explained. “Some guys back at the parking lot decided to signal their approval.”

“Oh. Okay.” He rubbed at his eyes, and stood up. “I think I agree with them. You look good.”

She did; the gaunt figure from two nights before had vanished, and she all but glowed with life. Fortunately, she didn’t mistake his meaning. “It’s the sun,” she said. “Yesterday you were worried I might burn with too much exposure, but I don’t think that’s going to happen. I’m soaking it up like a sponge, it’s wonderful.”

“Great.” Jack looked around. “What about the other stuff?”

“I left you some orange juice and a couple of sandwiches, plus most of the fruit. I ate all the rest.” She smiled at him. “The soup was a little strong, don’t you think? I could curdle eggs with my breath now.”

He returned the smile, glad of her returning health and glad of her good humor, but another thought struck him. “Do you have much change?” he asked her, checking the pockets of his slacks, folded beside the towel.

“You mean coins, right? I have some, I’m not sure how much. Why?”

“I wanted to use the phone,” he replied. “I might need to make several calls. You seem to be doing fine, can you stay busy without me for awhile longer?”

Loryn started a run down the beach as he headed for the pay phone at the parking lot, and he saw a blue Chevy Malibu pull out and speed away. (Afraid he was going to hassle them for eyeing “his girl”? Right now he’d have trouble hassling a Cub Scout.) The pay phone, miraculously, still had a directory attached to it, and he leafed through the Yellow Pages and began placing calls.

Forty minutes later Jack returned to the beach, and Loryn came to join him. She was sweating freely, but still full of vigor and exuberance. “Did you find out what you wanted?” she asked.

“I believe so. We’ll need to start back pretty soon so I can follow up on it.” He tilted his head, studying her. “You’ve come a long way. What do you think?”

“About me? About tonight?” Some of her happiness dimmed. “I don’t know, Jack. It’s obvious I’m stronger now, but I think the … other thing … is stronger, too. You saw what happened at the church. You’re helping, don’t misunderstand me, you’re pulling out all the stops to give me every possible edge. But you asked what I think, and … well, I just don’t know.”

It was four o’clock now, the sun already beginning its slow dip toward the horizon. “We might as well head back to my place,” Jack said. “It may take me some time to set up what I’ve arranged.”

They made the trip in silence, with Jack berating himself silently and trying to think of some way he might have asked the necessary question without puncturing Loryn’s spirits. In the parking lot outside his apartment, he pulled a key from the ring and gave it to her, saying, “I have to go out for a little while. Do you think you can …?”

“I’ll do aerobics,” Loryn told him patiently. “I’ll wear your vegetable necklace, I’ll read from your Bible and say the Lord’s Prayer and stay out on the balcony while there’s still sun. I’ll be okay. Just be sure you get back before dark.”

“I’ll try to remember,” he said. Smiling, she reached into the back seat for the cloth bag containing her clothes; and as she pulled it out, Jack’s gym bag shifted and settled, the oaken stakes inside clacking against each other.

She hadn’t noticed, Jack realized an instant later, she had already stepped back from the car and begun to close the door, but his reaction betrayed him. Loryn stopped, looking from his guilty face to the bag in the back, and in her own face he could see recognition and understanding and … resignation.

He opened dry lips to say something, say anything to fill the terrible moment, and she finished closing the car door and turned to start up the outer stairs toward his apartment. Without a word.

Without a word.

Just as she had done the last time.

*                *               *

In early April Jack had gone to a self-defense clinic at the gymnasium on campus. He had advanced to third degree brown belt in judo while in the Army, and was practicing at a local club to test for his second degree promotion, and this event offered an opportunity to explore his interest in other martial arts without committing to anything. He showed up in loose-fitting street clothes, as the flyer had instructed, and waited for the event to begin.

Turnout was relatively small, fewer than a dozen attendees plus the instructor and two of his students to help with demonstrations. The instructor, though obviously hoping to attract new members to his dojo, put some work into providing a legitimate learning experience for those who had come, and after the introduction and opening demonstrations he had them pair together to practice basic defensive and countering techniques.

Jack found himself with a female partner: improbable blonde hair in rows of Bo Derek braids, a cupid’s-bow mouth bright with red lipstick, and wanton, mocking eyes. As he took hold of her wrist so she could practice the prescribed grip-break, his gaze was drawn to her t-shirt. Printed on the front were the words:

    You can’t be the first.
    You won’t be the last.
    You might be the next.

While he was still registering the message, she freed her wrist with startling ease and a sudden twinge of joint pressure the instructor had NOT shown them. Jack looked back up at her face, and she gave him a glance full of insolent amusement.

He couldn’t duplicate her technique, but he repeated the instructor’s lesson competently enough. The next lesson involved a basic hip throw (“Pick your partner up, but don’t throw yet,” the instructor warned. “For now, just feel how the balance changes.”) The girl turned into Jack with a fluency that confirmed this wasn’t new to her; and when it was his turn, he applied a little extra oomph! that jolted her upward rather than simply lifting her. When they faced one another again, she regarded him with a new awareness, and from that moment it was war between them.

They spent an hour testing each other, and none of the other participants was conscious of the shadow combat taking place in their midst. The girl was proficient in kicks, hand-strikes and joint work, whereas Jack had clear superiority in grappling, body leverage and ground techniques. He was stronger, she was quicker and more acrobatic, their skill was roughly equivalent but devoted to different areas of development. Jack had dabbled in other martial arts but never concentrated on anything but judo; still, he knew enough to recognize that she was using an eclectic mix of technique rather than any single style. At every stage they applied enough additional force or focus to contest for mastery but not to reveal the contest to those around them, so that at the announced end of the clinic there still was no clear victor.

When the instructor had thanked them all for their attendance, and the tumbling mats had been folded back up beside the bleachers and the participants off to home or dinner or evening classes, Jack and his “partner” still remained, watching one another without speaking. At length Jack went to the largest mat and began to unfold it again; the girl shrugged and took the other end, and they pulled out enough to provide a floor area of about five yards by five.

When she bent to remove her shoes again, Jack saw the back of her shirt: there, the words read SUNDAY’S CHILD. “What does that mean?” he asked.

It was the first thing either of them had said to the other. “What does what mean?” she returned.

“Your shirt. The back.”

“Oh. Well, that’s me.” She smirked at him. “ ‘Fair of face,’ right?”

For a second he didn’t understand, then he said, “I don’t think it goes like that. Monday’s child is fair of face, Tuesday’s child is full of grace, Wednesday’s child …”

“I like my way better,” she said. She stepped onto the mat, and he went to meet her.

A pattern developed quickly. While they had stepped up from the hidden competition of the clinic, this was still sparring rather than combat. She kicked and punched hard enough to drive the breath from him, he threw her with a speed and force that could have injured her if she hadn’t known how to fall properly, but neither of them was going all-out, Jack withholding his full strength and she not aiming for the vulnerable targets that could have crippled instead of just hurting. He had to block, evade or shake off hand- and foot-strikes that seemed to come from every direction, and get his hands on her for a throw or takedown; she had to stay in constant motion to keep him from securing a grip, while remaining close enough to reach him with her own attacks.

Finally it went to the ground. Jack had the advantage in weight and strength, but had to keep shifting as she found new pressure points to torture. He got his upper body across her sternum, pinning her for a few seconds while he bent her arm and passed his own beneath it to take a cross-grip and apply the elbow lock that would force her surrender …

… and stopped, as he felt the warning pressure of a long thumbnail against the flesh of his lower eyelid. He turned slowly to look at her, she allowing the motion; they lay together, panting, and at last he croaked, “Draw?”

Perspiration matted her hair to a face flushed and splotchy from their struggle, but her smile was lewd and knowing and reckless. “I was thinking more of a rematch,” she said, voice husky from something more than from exertion. “But I get to choose the place.”

Her choice was the bedroom of a tiny studio apartment half a mile from campus, and there she emerged the winner, though it was well past midnight before Jack conceded defeat. And no, she wasn’t a natural blonde.

This was Merise.

In the morning she drove him back, negotiating traffic with terrifying abandon in an aging Metro convertible. Jack had already decided this was an experience worth remembering but too risky to repeat; the girl was a born outlaw, unpredictable and exhilarating and sheer poison for anything past the thrill of the moment. She let him out at the lot next to Rugg’s Field, and they looked to one another, currents of remembered pleasure flowing between them; then he said, “See you around,” with easy insincerity, and she gave him a small wave and a wide, salacious grin, and screeched away. Jack turned, a little regretful and much relieved, to start for his dorm …

Loryn was standing on the sidewalk bordering the lot, a backpack slung from one shoulder, watching him with an expression he couldn’t read. He gaped at her, too surprised to react otherwise, and before he could recover she turned without speaking and continued on her way.

They had already arranged to meet that evening at the student center for a movie. Jack was there at the agreed time, wondering if she would show. She did. Their greetings were polite, cautious, noncommittal. In the strained silence that followed, Jack mustered his courage and began, “About this morning …”

“What I saw,” Loryn said quietly. “Is it really something you want to talk about?”

Jack considered, and answered evenly, “I don’t think it’s important enough.”

“Then we won’t.” And they didn’t, and though Jack sometimes heard stories about Merise, he didn’t encounter her again. He and Loryn continued their routine, and he convinced himself that any suggestion of awkwardness between them sprang from their earlier disagreement about the significance of the occult.

Lies. Lies. He had believed because it was easier to believe. Loryn had seen, and known the truth at a glance, and in his willingness to avoid an uncomfortable discussion he had lost his chance to make it right again … until the chance had come again regardless, only to be fouled by a second betrayal.


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