Her eyes flicked briefly to his. “Yes, but I have to admit that she is looking better lately. The scars are the same, obviously, but there’s a brighter light in her eyes and a much healthier sort of aura about her. If I didn’t know better I’d say she’s undergoing some sort of religious experience.”

He was suppressing a smile now. “From what I hear forgiveness can be quite . . . uplifting, but I don’t think it’s about that as much as what she says it is—she’s getting a lot of pleasure out of helping someone who had a difficult start in life to find a new way in the world. Or, perhaps she just sees it as a way of turning a bad—a terrible situation—into something positive and good. Righting the wrongs of the fate that brought them together. Turning it on its head.”

Claudia said, “I had a feeling you’d see it from her point of view.”

“So tell me yours.”

She shook her head. “I’m not sure what it is, only that I find it odd the way she’s kind of bonding with him. Surreal, even.”

“Have you told her this?”

“No. I don’t want to upset her, especially when it really does seem to make her happy to see him.”

“So you wouldn’t want her to stop seeing him?”

“I want her to do, or to have, whatever works for her. I’m just finding it hard to get my head around the fact that . . . Well, that we’re even having this conversation about my mother and a boy of nineteen who almost killed her.”

“But it’s not disturbing her, and that’s probably because she knows where the real responsibility lies, as do you. There’s no point going there though, at least not for the purposes of this conversation. Just tell me what Jasmine thinks of the . . . friendship.”