So he felt like a heel, but all he really understood was that he needed a resolution, he had it in his sights, and for his own sanity, and for all the unanswered, tormented questions of the past, he was going to use Katelin’s extended absence to find Alison Connor, and stand in front of her, and then see what happened next. He kissed Katelin goodbye, his dear partner, for whom he really did wish nothing but happiness. Then, as the train moved away from the station, his wayward, ungovernable thoughts went straight back to Alison, and the way her face had always nestled hotly against his neck when they embraced, and she’d breathed him in as though she needed him to stay alive. And the sense he had of Alison’s remembered physical presence was stronger, somehow, than the sense he had of Katelin, who only moments ago had been right here, beside him. Alison Connor was intangible yet concrete, unreal yet hyper-real at one and the same time. A head rush, a total fucking head rush; it was like nothing else he’d ever felt.