“Best I can do. The first one, the one she wouldn’t call by name. She lit into him, up one side and down the other. I never saw her mad like that. And it took awhile listening to even know how angry she was. Because her voice was calm, way down calm, and flat. Almost as if the thought of the person she was talking to sickened her and made her furious at once so the only way she could speak was calm. But more to it than that. It was as if she was before something evil and small both. Scorn, that’s the word I’m looking for. She scorned the person before her, in her mind, in her mind’s-eye she didn’t fear him. Although I think she once had. All right. She was telling him he’d known better and still allowed things to happen, caused those things to happen. That he took the revenge intended for her and poured it onto someone else. Because she was not there but more than that—because he could, because he had the power to do those things. Evil things, that he knew in his heart were evil and still allowed. Caused. Likely celebrated. At the time it happened and all the years later when he told her about it. Told her smiling. She talked about that, how that smile wasn’t anything. Because she knew the truth of him, knew it then and had known it always. And she told him he knew it too—knew what sort of man he was. Said she had no pity for him but hoped with all her heart that the knowledge of himself ran around in him all the time, never leaving him be but working on him all the time. She spoke of that as being like a low fire always burning, like a fire of greenwood in him, in his guts and heart. In his soul. Told him all he had for a soul was that burning. Told him she was glad to see him living, hoped he’d live on forever and ever, each day and night a torment on him. Said she wasn’t fooled by the smile; she knew the smile of a dead man when she saw it. And told him finally that she wasn’t the only one to know this. Told him each person in his life knew it of him, everyone, including that old man who saved his life and whose life got taken in thanks. And that this was with him always; all she wished for him was for it to be with him always, for that knowing to eat away at whatever passed for his heart like fruitflies at a big rotting peach. Told him in this life that was the best he could hope for. It was,” Abby said, “like she was making a wish as much as a curse. Exactly like I said earlir—as if she’d gone over and over something she’d not got right the first time but had it right now.” And she stopped then, waiting for her father.