“It was their choice, not yours,” snapped Gabriel. “They had a responsibility.”

“They tried. But I didn’t make it easy. I’d become a minor celebrity, so my teenage years included a full complement of defiant acts. Shoplifting. Tantrums. In London, I tried to run away and live in a hostel. Dad found me, promised to let me have some freedom if I behaved. I demanded they let me try out for a game show on the BBC. Mom took me to the audition and I made it onto the show. I had to answer questions about etymology. I won. They kept me on for nearly six months. The teenage language freak.”

Startled, Gabriel shook his head, the pieces falling into place. He’d been in London then, a twenty-year-old reporter interning with the Times. “You’re Analise.”

“That’s who I was.” She turned to face him, guarded and calm. “My full name is Analise Erin Abbott Glover. Abbott is my mother’s maiden name.”

He picked up the story, remembering. “You did an interview once. They asked you about your hobbies. I remember, you said you liked to read obituaries. Said the people in them had much more interesting lives than yours.” He smiled gently. “I remember thinking you sounded incredibly tired.”

“My parents had a different idea. They got scared. Decided I needed structure and to be around kids my own age.”

“They sent you away.”

“To Callenwolde.” Chilled by the coming memory, Erin moved past Gabriel to the chair to sit. “Dr. Nathan Rhodes was an exceptional linguist and appropriately older than I. He agreed to an arrangement. I’d work with him and he’d help hone my talent.”

“You have a second degree?”

“No. I didn’t finish my studies in linguistics. My junior year, he refused to allow me to major in it. Told me my talents weren’t up to it.”

“What did your parents say?” Gabriel bent down next to her, refusing to allow her the distance to hide.

“My parents and Mrs. Cain died in a plane crash soon after I got to Callenwolde. I only had Nathan. I was so lost,” she said in a tiny voice he could barely hear. “So grateful for his attention. Because I was a minor, he petitioned the courts for custody. Later, I moved out of the dorm and into his house.” She remembered the days in a blur. How she’d left the house for classes, driven there and back by Nathan. The few friends she’d made began to stop inviting her out, knowing she’d decline. “I didn’t have to think about anything. He told me to cut my hair. I did. He told me to change my studies. I did. Everything he demanded, I did. I was a coward, a nebbish.”