"I think this is one of those times where ignorance would have been blissful," I said, not unkind, and not as if I wasn't grateful for her warning me. I knew the bizarre sorts of things that Darrow could do to a person, I just never never imagined I'd see him again. Him, all of him, not just a face that happened to resemble his.

I wasn't over losing him. I'm still not. But I'd tried my hardest to rationalise it all, to tell myself that when he went he saved another, that the life he lived was rich and real and what he wanted it to be. But I could hardly convince myself. Those days, at least. "I appreciate you saying so, though."