“When Brocker arrived he took her hands and held them to his face and cried into them.”

“Cole reached into his pocket and handed Beckett the bag with the rings. He held them gently in a cupped hand for a moment and smiled down at them. Then he put them in his pocket and held his head high.”

“His arms closed around them. While the storm raged outside,he held them protectively. Anna buried her face in one side of his neck,David in the other. His hands cupped the backs of their heads,pressing them closer.Things were hurled against the cellar door with such impetus that David's small fist gripped a handful of his shirt. And he knew that this was what mattered. They mattered. He mattered to them. All the rest of it all the rest of it evaporated into insignificance..”

“and when he saw the kid standing there looking looking down at him he held out to him his bloodied hands as if in accusation and then clapped them to his ears and cried out what it seemed he himself would not hear, a howl of such outrage as to stitch a caesura in the pulsebeat of the world.”

“He came up straight to her father, whose hands he took and wrung without a word - holding them in his for a minute or two, during which time his face, his eyes, his look, told of more sympathy than could be put into words.”

“He folded his fear into a perfect rose. He held it out in the palm of his hand. She took it from him and put it in her hair.”