"It's your fault!" Mine?" he asked, taken aback."Yesterday at my party, you just stayed in your room the whole time and wouldn't come down. It was my ...birthday, Jeff! But you didn't even say happy birthday to me!" She began to sob again.Jeff's eyes filled with tears as well. "Oh, Brit, I'm so sorry!" he said. "If I had realized it would hurt you this much, I wouldn't have done it. I was just sulking because ... because I've seen how affectionate you are with Dad, and I got jealous. I miss how. His own words disturbed him, not so much for their meaning as the fact he had felt the urge to say them when no one would hear them. And what exactly made little sense? That his Master was not present? That he felt the need for guidance? That he had not solved his Master's dilemma?Jollis left the chamber. He gazed down the corridor and spotted Yonlas at the far end. When his faithful assistant did not move, Jollis tilted his head. "You feel the need for distance this morning?"Yonlas paused, his. . assurances that I was going to be okay ... but there was nothing else ... just constant dull pain and brief moments of respite from angelic whispered voices.When I awoke in my hospital bed, there was a feeding tube in my nose, IV tubes in my arms, and my hands were cuffed to the rails of the bed. "At least I won't break my nose this time", I thought to myself. I remembered the dead biker's lifeless eyes and wondered how much trouble I was in. I looked over and saw Samantha dozing in a chair. Perhaps the hardest part was over but everything was not quite done.They still had the afternoon to get through. Then in the evening there would be a private dinner, just the two of them. As Stan had explained, he would arrive a little later so they could discuss Bob's will.Mandy knew that eventually she would be all cried out. She had never wanted to be abandoned again. Now she was a widow. Expecting a child. Again she was alone. No one was with her.That was the core of her despair. She didn't.