“James Potter moved slowly along the narrow aisles of the train, peering as nonchalantly as he could into each compartment. To those inside, he probably looked as if he was searching for someone, some friend or group of confidantes with whom to pass the time during the trip, and this was intentional. The last thing that James wanted anyone to notice was that, despite the bravado he had so recently displayed with his younger brother Albus on the platform, he was nervous. His stomach knotted and churned as if he’d had half a bite of one of Uncles Ron and George’s Puking Pastilles. He opened the folding door at the end of the passenger car and stepped carefully through the passage into the next one. The first compartment was full of girls. They were talking animatedly to one another, already apparently the best of friends despite the fact that, most likely, they had only just met. One of them glanced up and saw him staring. He quickly looked away, pretending to peer out the window behind them, toward the station which still sat bustling with activity. Feeling his cheeks go a little red, he continued down the corridor. If only Rose was a year older she’d be here with him. She was a girl, but she was his cousin and they’d grown up together. It would’ve been nice to have at least one familiar face along with him.”

“He waited a few more seconds, hoping her tight jaw would unclench and she’d ask him to stay, but she sat staring down the empty track.There was nothing for him to do but walk away. The drum of his boot heels as he left Amanda and Lydia behind sounded like the clang of thedoor slamming shut on his prison cell in Lexington. Each step away fromthem felt like a year added to his sentence.Spence only walked about a hundred yards before he stopped. His chest ached so much he could hardly draw breath. He couldn’t do this.He looked back over his shoulder at Amanda sitting on the bench. She held Lydia on her lap facing her, resting against her arms and looking up into her face. They were involved in an intimate, one-sided conversation.He stood and stared. He couldn’t leave them, but Amanda had made it clear she didn’t want him. God, he would give anything if he could goback and change the way they’d met. But how could he have done thingsdifferently and still have met Amanda? If he hadn’t pretended to be Travis Baxter that day at the station, she never would’ve spoken to him at all. Spence couldn’t regret what he’d done nor could he condone it. It was a double-edged sword.”

“He had no faintest conception till that very hour of how they would look, and even doubted their existence. But when he saw them he knew that he had always known them and realized what part each one of them had played at many an hour in his life when he had supposed himself alone, so that now he could say to them, one by one, not ‘Who are you?’ but ‘So it was you all the time.’ All that they were and said at this meeting woke memories. The dim consciousness of friends about him which had haunted his solitudes from infancy was now at last explained; that central music in every pure experience which had always just evaded memory was now at last recovered...He saw not only Them; he saw Him. This animal, this thing begotten in a bed, could look on Him. What is blinding, suffocating fire to you is now cool light to him, is clarity itself, and wears the form of a man.”

“Tina and Pete stood together. Pete knew he should be grilling the girl, getting the full story before details were lost, but he was too spellbound by the reunion. The boy he was watching was so different. There was no way to avoid the truth. Someone, a very evil someone, had hurt his boy. Pete felt his fists clench. Whoever it was that had turned Lockie into the skinny kid trapped behind his pain, he would pay. If he had to spend his whole life looking for him, Pete would find him and then he would make him pay. The girl had obviously helped Lockie. He had no idea if she had found him or if she had been with him the whole time, but Lockie kept saying that she had ‘saved’ him. He was a clever kid and he knew what the word meant. Pete liked the way she looked at Lockie—like a lioness, like a sister, like a mother. The skinny girl with short messy black hair could have been anyone. She looked about fifteen but when she spoke she sounded a lot older. She was wearing a big coat but underneath that Pete had caught a glimpse of a short skirt and a tight red top. Not the kind of thing a nice girl would wear. Maybe she wasn’t a nice girl but she was smart. That was easy to see. She was watching Lockie with his dad and Pete could see her body sag with relief. She was relieved to get him home. It must have been a promise she had made the boy. Pete had no idea how she’d got him home. She didn’t look like she had a cent to her name. He sighed. So many questions to answer and the worst part was that some of the answers would be things he did not want to hear. Some of the answers would keep him up at night for the rest of his life. He wished he didn’t have to know, but he figured that if Lockie had been through it his family should know about it. If Lockie had been one of the small skeletons buried in the yard in Sydney they would have only been able to imagine what he had suffered. Now they would know. Which way was better?Pete thought about all the other parents who were waiting for the results of tests from the police. For a moment he let go of what needed to be done and what was to come and he offered up a prayer of thanks. Then he offered up a prayer for strength for all those other parents who would never again get to feel their kid’s arms around their neck. And then he wiped his eyes because he was a grown man and a cop and he really shouldn’t be standing in the driveway crying.”

“He thought about alone in Constantinople that time, having quarreled in Paris before he had gone out. He had whored the whole time and then, when that was over, and he had failed to kill his loneliness, but only made it worse, he had written her, the first one, the one who left him, a letter telling her how he had never been able to kill it . . . . How when he thought he saw her outside the Regence one time it made him go all faint and sick inside, and that he would follow a woman that looked like her in some way, along the Boulevard, afraid to see it was not she, afraid to lose the feeling it gave him. How every one he had slept with had only made him miss her more. How what she had done could never matter since he could never cure himself of loving her.”

“Before she realized he was next to her, he had placed his hands over hers on the countertop, then hooped his fingers through hers. Gretel looked up at him, so startled she might as well have been shot.'I just wanted to wake you up', he said.Which is exactly what he did. One look at him and her heart was racing. One look, and whatever had been before was all over.”