I just wanted you to know how much we appreciate your continued efforts.” The woman—who never identified herself—smiled and walked away.“All r...ight,” Toni said, cornering her father. “Ever since I arrived, you’ve been fending me off, avoiding direct conversations. Yet little encounters like this—or the one with your friends—keep popping up. They intimate you’re up to something. Since you did the same thing before, freezing out friends and family when you needed us most, I think it’s time we. Baltin had never heard Rebekka do that. ‘No,’ snarled the spider. ‘Please,’ insisted the child. ‘If you try to touch it again I’ll let you,’ snarled the spider. ‘And then I’ll drink all the blood you spill.’ The spider licked his lips. ‘I bet scorpids are tasty.’ Rebekka giggled. Baltin raised his eyebrows. Maybe the reason he couldn’t make her giggle was that he had been telling her the wrong kinds of jokes. The spider again held a legtip out to Rebekka. The child stared at it with fascination. He just assumed it was all his spunk he was smelling.Bobby also poked his head into her room, whispering her name, hoping she'd wake up and throw back the covers to let him mount her again. but she was too deep in her dreams ... dreams of a swollen abdomen with a strong, kicking baby inside.When she woke up the house was empty. She knew if she stayed there she'd end up flat on her back with Bobby hunched over her and, as much as she'd have liked that, she wanted to go see her Uncle. She had. That was it, that was what had been missing. When the entire focus of a relationship is what he can do for me, it isn’t possible to develop feelings for someone who is, essentially, a tool. Adding the concepts of what can I do for him and can I care for him, it’s not clear you can have one without the other. Nonetheless, Etienne was not someone I cared for. He was too far behind to ever catch up to Jeff. If somehow Jeff had not been a part of my life, Etienne would have made a perfectly.