As he gazed out into the forest, he saw instead the hospital in Rome; saw himself there, standing before a window, agreeing to take the child. Why had he not asked more about the mother? Who was she? Where had she come from? Who was the father, and why was he not there? Over the years he had made certain assumptions and they had served to calm his fears. Damien's real mother was probably a peasant girl, a girl of the Church, therefore delivering her child in a Catholic hospital. It was an expensive hospital and she wouldn't have been there without that kind of connection. She was probably an orphan herself, thus no family, and the child was born out of wedlock, this the reason no father was on hand. What else was there to know? What else could have mattered? The child was beautiful and alert, described as "perfect in every way."

Thorn was unaccustomed to doubting himself, to accusing himself; his mind struggled for reassurance that what he had done was right. He had been confused and desperate at the time. He had been vulnerable, an easy prey to suggestion. Could it possibly have been wrong? Could there have been more he needed to know?

The answers to those questions would never be known to Thorn. Only a handful of people knew them and by now they were scattered across the globe. There was Sister Teresa, Father Spilletto, and Father Tassone. Only they knew. It was for their consciences alone. In darkness of that long-distant night they had worked in feverish silence, in the tension and honor of having been chosen. In all of earth's history it had been attempted just twice before, and they knew that, this time, it must not fail. It was all in their hands, just the three of them, and it had moved like clockwork, and no one had known. After the birth, it was Sister Teresa who prepared the impostor, depilitating his arms and forehead, powdering him dry so he would look presentable when Thorn was brought up to view. The hair on his head was thick, as they had hoped, and she used a hairdryer to fluff it, first checking the scalp to make sure the birthmark was there. Thorn would never see Sister Teresa, nor would he see the diminutive Father Tassone who was at work in the basement crating two bodies to be immediately shipped away. The first body was that of Thorn's child, silenced before it uttered its first cry; the second was that of the animal, the surrogate mother of the one who survived. Outside, a truck was waiting to carry the bodies to Cerveteri, where in the silence of Cimitero di Sant' Angelo, gravediggers waited beneath the shrine.