Glimpse: The Complete Trilogy

by Sara Jamieson

  “Why do you keep at them knowing that they do not listen?”

  “Because they may not listen, but they do still hear. And if my words sink in deeply enough, maybe someday they will be prepared in spite of themselves, and they will make their choices accordingly.”

  Connor Ridley, Shadows Fall

  Meredyth’s grandstanding display at the engagement party was a turning point. She had chosen to mess with the wrong person. It was terribly clichéd and all that, but it would sound like a wonderful come back to be able to make in the situation in which he found himself. Will wished that it was something which he could say. He couldn’t, of course, because he had no intention of saying absolutely anything to her if he didn’t absolutely have to do so. (He also had no intention of saying anything under any circumstances that would do anything even remotely in the realm of drawing her further attention.)

  He also wished that there was something inherent in him that meant that Meredyth had picked the wrong target because he was too full of integrity to cave to her high handed (and morally questionable) decrees. It wasn’t like that. He couldn’t say that. He couldn’t even think that. He might not be a lot of things that he probably should have been, but he didn’t make a habit of lying to himself either.

  He couldn’t know for sure what his course of action would have been if Meredyth had left him alone (it was his personal opinion that no one could really say that with any certainty because one never knew what might happen under unexpected circumstances), but he had a fairly good idea what the odds were and how things would likely have fallen into place. He was as confident as he could comfortably be that he would have done nothing. He would have continued to pretend that he didn’t need to be involved. He would have continued to pretend that it had nothing to do with him, and there was no reason to disturb his life to venture into the midst of what was nothing short of a quagmire of trouble. He would have continued to pretend that he hadn’t had those conversations with Connor. He would have continued to pretend that Connor’s words didn’t pop up at random times when he was doing random things and mock him with his lack of action.

  He hadn’t wanted to be involved. He still didn’t want to be involved. Why would he? Why would anyone who was in their right mind want to involve themselves in all of this? He wasn’t Connor. He had made that clear when the other man had asked him for his help. Then again, it hadn’t been asking for help so much as it had been a presentation that he had been expected to respond to in a prescribed manner. That, of course, hadn’t happened. He hadn’t responded in the way Connor had expected, and he knew it (no matter how well Connor thought that he had maintained his unconcerned and “it’s up to you” demeanor).

  Everything was so cut and dry for Connor. He never seemed to struggle or wonder or do anything except jump right in the middle of everything because it was the “right thing” to do. It was maddening to be around in even small doses. It was no wonder that Connor didn’t seem to have a life beyond his never ending projects. What made him so sure? What made him so confident that it had to be him?

  No. He wasn’t going to think about Connor and his infuriating hero complex issues right now. He was agitated enough without bringing Connor into the mix. This was about him. This was about Meredyth. This was about Will Walsh and what he was going to do next. This was about figuring out the best way to protect what was important to him. This was about how he ended up right in the middle of the quagmire despite his intentions to stay well away from it.

  He was honest enough to admit that there was nothing heroic or idealistic or integrity laden about his choices. He hadn’t found himself overcome with the need to fight evil or protect the standing of his family name or even with a sense of obligation to correct wrongs because he saw them being committed in front of him. He wasn’t going to ponder the implications about what that said about him as a person. He didn’t need to do any pondering. That would have been a waste of his time. He knew what it said about him.

  He didn’t want to be involved. If it wasn’t his mess, then he shouldn’t have to fix it. If it didn’t immediately touch him, then he didn’t want to have to worry about it. Things that weren’t about him shouldn’t be expected to intrude on his plans and goals and muck everything up. It meant he was a little indolent and a lot self-involved and that he liked his own little circle of existence to remain his own little circle of existence untouched by outside influences. There was nothing about it that was grandiose. There was nothing about it that was heroic. There was nothing about it that was anything but him continuing to be self-involved.

  It was all quite simple. Meredyth had decided to push him into a corner. Anyone would push back if pushed into a corner. It was a natural response to being shoved into a corner -- even for him. Meredyth had violated the sanctity of his little life circle, and he wanted her out of it. She had pulled him in despite his opposition to being pulled. Meredyth had made a miscalculation (which was something that might have been amusing under other circumstances as his soon to be sister-in-law seemed to coast through her life using, in part, an uncanny ability of reading people well enough that she always appeared to be exactly what they wanted). She had thought she needed to exert some sort of extra pressure when what she had needed to do to accomplish (what he assumed were) her goals was to leave well enough alone.

  She had taken the wrong track with him, and he, in good conscience, couldn’t let that go unanswered. He couldn’t chance it. He couldn’t trust that she wouldn’t miscalculate again and think that he needed some sort of further pushing that would further mess up his world as he liked it. He had to do whatever he could to meddle, to interrupt her plans, to keep her worrying about other things, and to ultimately stop her -- for no other reason than because it was about his life now. She had made it that way.

  If joining Connor’s little band of do gooders was what it took to keep her well away from Karen, then that was what he would do. It was a matter of convenience. It was a matter of knowing that he needed allies. As previously stated, his thinking didn’t tend toward the grandiose -- not when it came to his motives, and not when it came to his personal abilities. He knew that help (and, quite frankly, direction from someone who had a clearer grasp of the big picture) was not just a potential option or a luxury. It was necessary, so joining up with Connor was what he would do.

  That wasn’t to say that he was about to find himself a cheerleading uniform and a megaphone and egg them on anytime soon. They didn’t need any egging. They had their fingers in plenty of pies without any egging. It was probably a lot more than what they let him see. He could honestly say that he didn’t understand a whole lot of how they seemed to be going about their put a stop to the Wyatt and Meredyth reign of terror wannabe project. (That sounded so surreally cheesy even as the label went by in his head, but it couldn’t be helped. It was, after all, an accurate title.)

  In what sort of messed up reality did one have to think about one’s brother in the terms of plots to take over the world -- literally? Of course, in what sort of messed up reality was one quite literally afraid of what one’s sister-in-law might do to you? A seriously messed up version of reality was what it was, and one in which he preferred not to have a part. Unfortunately, nobody had asked him whether he was cool with his reality devolving into this quagmire. He was sticking with the word quagmire. It was a good, solid word that was suitably picturesque. (It worked for him and sounded appropriately danger laden and difficult from which to extricate himself.)

  There were some things about the little group which he was now a part of that made sense and many more that did not. Connor was, he thought, in charge of whatever it was that they were doing. That seemed the obvious conclusion to draw. He was the one who had attempted to recruit him initially, and he was the one who made the final decisions. At least, he was where the marching orders on specifics always seemed to come from when they actually
came (there was a lot more watch this and look for this than directions to actually do things).

  Anna was a little more difficult to place. She did something with computers, he knew, but he wasn’t certain what exactly it was. He suspected some sort of hacking of questionable legal status because she seemed to have an ever flowing amount of information that she shouldn’t have access to by any legitimate means. He was tempted, upon occasion, to mention to Connor the irony of his apparent methods when they were supposed to be the “good guys” in this scenario, but he refrained. There were more important things than knocking Connor off of his high horse. He wasn’t about to burn bridges. He could save running his mouth and pointing out Connor’s flaws for a time when he didn’t need his help any longer.

  Anyway . . . back to Anna. Whatever she was doing to get information was working (a little too well if you asked him). She had some people under serious (and had he mentioned recently so obviously illegal?) surveillance or she was insanely good at extrapolating educated guesses. His money (were he betting, which he normally didn’t, but this one seemed a pretty safe one to take) would be on the surveillance. No one was that on point when it came to guessing people’s next moves and motivations. It just wasn’t a possibility. She was right too often for it to be anything other than inside information, and he knew good and well that she wasn’t getting inside information voluntarily from the people that had to be involved.

  Granted, it wasn’t as though he got to spend much time around Anna to make observations. (He couldn’t say that he minded much. She was even more focused than Connor, and a reasonable person could only take so much of being around that level of intensity before feeling like one’s brain was going to implode from it all.) Connor kept a strict limit on meetings with Anna. Will got the distinct impression that if Connor had had a choice, then he wouldn’t know anything about Anna. That just cemented the idea in his brain that she was doing something not strictly legal to further Connor’s cause.

  He wondered why Connor’s noble streak allowed him to let someone else do the dirty (and potentially jail time serving) work for him, but he figured that was par for the course for people with hero complexes. Didn’t they (they being the hero complex minded) always have a sidekick or two who were tasked with doing all of the more mundane (and lacking in public lauding) tasks?

  He needed to take a deep breath. There was a line, and he was crossing it. He really needed to ease up on Connor a little. He was just such an easy target for the near constant tension that Will was feeling. He had no reason to believe that there was anything public glory seeking about Connor. If anything, he seemed determined to keep everything as quiet as they possibly could. That suited him fine. It wasn’t like he wanted word of any of this getting out either -- particularly not to Meredyth. He supposed, however, that she would figure it out eventually. It wasn’t like she wasn’t already aware of Connor’s activities (although he suspected that she wasn’t familiar with the extent to which they existed as she seemed to be making a habit of underestimating in the worst possible places). She would eventually realize that he hadn’t heeded her warnings. He was counting on it being too late for any type of retaliation by the time that she did.

  He had no intention of ever finding himself in the position that Connor and Anna had been in when he had originally come on board. He tried to remember that whenever they were grating on his last nerve. It made them more his version of human. Well, wasn’t that just a touchy feely thought that he had rolling around in his head? It wasn’t that he wanted to be all empathetic and let’s hold hands and talk about our feelings. (The thought actually made him physically ill.) What he wanted was to be able to work with them for as long as he needed to without any ugly (and counterproductive) blow ups, and a little bit of being able to relate went a long way toward accomplishing that goal. Thus, he kept that memory on backup file for whenever he was losing his patience with them (which was rather oftener than it should have been).

  He could sympathize a little more with their intensity (and general single minded pigheadedness) when he reminded himself of what they were coping with when it came to the Lawson girl. He could put himself in the position of semi panic of not knowing what Meredyth may or may not have done to someone that you cared about. (This was made all the more disturbing in his imagination by the fact that he had no idea what to expect.) She hadn’t made specific threats. She had only made general implications. They had even been leveled at him personally, but was there really any way better to inflict damage on someone than to take it out on someone that they cared about? Further, he didn’t even know whether he was justified in his worry because he didn’t even know whether Meredyth knew that Karen existed let alone whether she considered her a target. That just brought more frustration about whether he was doing anything to bring her to the other woman’s attention if he hadn’t already done so. He really shouldn’t even get started on the ethics of whether that meant that he should cut ties with Karen to keep her out of it. He wasn’t that ethical. He had no intention of giving up Karen.

  That was, after all, why he was ensnared in the messy midst of this in the first place. He was trying to avoid putting both himself and Karen through that very thing. He hadn’t been, however, clear at the beginning on why it was that Lia Lawson (and where she was or wasn’t and why) was even on the Ridley/McKee radar.

  He wasn’t completely clueless (when it happened that he didn’t want to be). He was no stranger to the fact of a former engagement that tied Connor to the Lawson family (it had been the hot topic of conversation for far longer than such simple personal information had warranted). He had, after all, attended high school with the both of them. They hadn’t been friends, but they had been acquaintances. He and Connor had had a few clubs/sports activities in common. While he was two years younger, he had still been one of the witnesses to the couple’s early years together. (A time, which he would never mention to the parties involved no matter how often he might think it, when Wyatt hadn’t even registered as a dot on the globe in Meredyth Lawson’s world. It was a petty thought, but it seemed to pop into his head whenever Wyatt’s too pleased with himself smirk lasted for too long.)

  Everyone had known that Ridley was a pushover that spent half his time hanging out with Lawson’s little sister (the things teenage boys were willing to go through to get on a girl’s good side). Given that, he obviously knew why Connor knew the Lawson kid. That was where the obvious section of the situation came to an end. It had been pretty common knowledge in their social circle that Ridley had cleared out and had nothing to do with the family after the break up (gossip ran rampant). That left him wondering why Connor would care where she was now. She was just a kid that he used to know when he wasn’t much more than a kid himself.

  Anna McKee was an even bigger question mark (there was a big question mark next to Anna McKee’s name in his head when it came to many things). There was no reason for her and Lia Lawson’s paths to have ever crossed (let alone for them to actually know each other). None of that practical knowledge of his answered the question of why it didn’t take a whole lot of thought to work out the fact that the two of them were downright panicked by the Lawsons’ decision to have the kid change schools. Connor was normally (that was in his public persona with which Will was most familiar) fairly self-contained. He didn’t let much show when it came to his personal emotions. He didn’t know Anna well (or at all really), but she didn’t strike him as the high strung type. She seemed like the type who was (under normal circumstances) pretty unflappable. Neither one of them had been able to turn off their obviously hopeful reactions any time that they received some smidgeon of a tidbit of information about Lia or to completely hide how disappointed that they were when that information turned out to be a dead end.

  It was weird. Kids changed schools all the time. He wouldn’t have even known that she had if his mother hadn’t mentioned that sh
e missed having her at family dinners. There was nothing odd about that. She lived with her sister, not their father, and Meredyth was getting married. From a practical (if a little cold hearted) stance, it seemed like a reasonable time for her to make the switch to a boarding school. There was nothing suspicious there. Granted, if he was being fair, there wasn’t any reason for most people to expect to find anything suspicious there so they weren’t likely to be looking.

  Except that some people were -- this had brought his thoughts full circle to the lack of reason for his new allies to be scrambling to try to figure out where it was that she had gone. There were enough things that he was unsure about in regards to his new place in the picture without adding in some big mystery about his soon to be in-laws into the already far too stirred up pot. It was yet another unknown, and there were already too many of them. It took him a bit to figure it out. (He could admit it. He was a little slow when it came to piecing together things not in his immediate vicinity. It was that self-centered thing rearing its head again.)

  There was only one logical reason that explained the manner in which Connor and Anna had reacted to something that shouldn’t have required any reaction at all. She had to have been in the middle of something that they were in the middle of -- they had to have all been working on the same project. Connor was the reason that Anna knew Lia. Access to Meredyth was a perfect reason for Connor to have looked up a girl that he hadn’t seen in years. It all tied together quite nicely once you were looking at it from the proper perspective. Lia Lawson was part of their little do gooder group. It had to be. He actually mentally face palmed the day it dawned on him because it should have occurred to him a lot sooner than it did.

  What she specifically could have been doing escaped him because she was just a kid, and it wasn’t like Connor would be forthcoming if he called him out on it. If he hadn’t wanted him to know about Anna, then there was no way that he would want him connecting the dots to Lia (not that the two of them had bothered much with schooling themselves to not let on that something was up). He was left to his own speculation. That Connor had had the girl spying on Meredyth in some capacity seemed to be the answer. It was yet another blow to the concept of Connor’s nobility. She’d gotten busted, and Meredyth had shipped her off to school somewhere and put a little extra effort into making it difficult to determine where it was she went.

  It made sense (even if it didn’t cover the extent of the reaction he had seen). It was overkill in his opinion. After all, Lia was Meredyth’s sister. It had been made clear, to him anyway, that she placed a higher value on that relationship than Wyatt placed on his own sibling relationship (although he was fairly certain that cats put a higher value on sibling relationships than Wyatt did). It wasn’t as though the girl was in any danger. Changing schools was hardly the end of the world (even though it might seem like it when you were sixteen years old). She would get over it, and the forced disassociation from Connor and his machinations wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s not like his presence in her life had done her any favors. She was better off out of it (everyone would be). It didn’t have anything to do with her as long as she stayed out of it. He wished he still had the same luxury.

  Connor didn’t seem like an overly cold-hearted guy. Maybe it hadn’t been all business as usual. Maybe they actually liked the girl. It was a safe bet that they certainly didn’t want her to get hurt in the process (although they could have bothered to think about that before they got her involved). He concluded that they wanted to know where she was to relieve their consciences by knowing for certain that she was fine.

  Whatever. He supposed that it made sense. He was focusing on the humanizing part of it. They wanted to know she was okay. He could relate to that. He would relate to that. He would also use it to rack up some you owe me one credit with Connor. It wasn’t mercenary of him. It really wasn’t. It was a mutually beneficial arrangement. He had information that Connor seemed to want. He would offer it up, and he might be able to ask Connor for something that he wanted in return at some point. There was nothing wrong with that. That was win win all around.

  It was purely an accident that he stumbled across the information that they wanted. He most certainly wasn’t going to walk up to Meredyth and say “hey, where’d you send the kid?” That would have been sending his neck too far out on the chopping block, and he wasn’t about to go there -- definitely not for this. It wasn’t (he reminded himself yet again) as if the kid was actually in some sort of danger. It was a boarding school. It might not be the most fun a teenager ever had, but how bad could it really be?

  He was actually only half listening to his mother as she chatted away over breadsticks when they had gotten together for lunch when she just up and casually mentioned that she was in the middle of packing a care package for Meredyth’s little sister. It was just like that -- random and completely unexpected with the source of the information that Anna and Connor had been beating their brains out against the proverbial brick wall to try to find landing right in his lap. He had been busy thinking of other things (something that he could admit that he did quite often when he met his mother for lunch, it wasn’t as if she didn’t know, sometimes he was willing to swear that she just prattled more on purpose in response).

  “Wait, why?” It was not the most brilliant way to go about casually getting more information, but he had been caught off guard. It would do the job. Did he really need to be cautiously casual with his mother? Unfortunately, his mother had already moved on by two or three completely unrelated topic jumps by then. It wasn’t as if her conversation actually followed any sort of rhyme or reason. She was very much a stream of consciousness type woman which is part of why he usually didn’t find it necessary to pay much attention.

  “Why?” She echoed rolling her eyes as if she couldn’t believe this was the point in the conversation where he had suddenly decided to take an interest. “Because you can’t use daisies for an arrangement like that. You have to have something with more color or the whole thing just looks too bland.”

  “No,” he told her not even wanting to ponder what she was decorating or why it needed more color. “Why are you putting together care packages?”

  She tutted at him (it wasn’t an uncommon event but he still found it unnecessarily pretentious each time that she did it). “Why wouldn’t I?” She countered.

  He could tell that now that she actually had him participating in the conversation she was going to draw it out as much as possible. It was annoying, but he couldn’t really blame her. Maybe he should make more of an effort to comment during their “catch up” time, or maybe that was more effort than he was willing to make. It wasn’t as if there was often information that he might want to have in her ramblings. It would be a lot of work for not much of a return. He would deal with the annoyance of drawn out information spreading when the situation arose.

  He raised an eyebrow and attempted to stare her into the release of further information. It didn’t work. He didn’t really expect that it would. She was immune to being stared down. She had too much practice from raising Wyatt.

  “Isn’t that something her family should be doing?” He prompted. It seemed a reasonable assumption. He hadn’t gone to boarding school, so he was not in a position to attest to the proper care package procedure. His mother looked disappointed in him. He had probably unsettled her sense of sentimentality.

  “How I raised children so tactless and insensitive,” she muttered before continuing in a louder voice. “She is family,” she insisted. “It will be official soon enough.” A dark look passed across her features. It was disturbingly out of place. Letty Walsh and dark looks just didn’t belong together. “Someone has to look after the child,” she leaned closer to him as if in an attempt to prevent being overheard.

  It was pure public place paranoia on his mother’s part. She was a firm believer in p
rivate concerns being discussed in private. You couldn’t reason with her that the wait staff and other patrons didn’t care to know what you were talking about. Sometimes, he found himself mimicking her habit without realizing that he was doing it until later.

  “Don’t pretend you haven’t noticed,” she chided him. “You aren’t nearly as oblivious as you like to pretend to be.” That was unexpected. What did she mean by that?

  “What is it I’m supposed to have noticed?” He voiced letting his confusion show in his tone.

  “Why do you think I’ve always insisted that she be included in family functions?” She demanded still maintaining her I’m in public but no one will be overhearing if I can help it volume. Her eyes narrowed. “Or have you been spending so much time getting out of them that you have failed to pay attention to anything else?” He didn’t really have a satisfactory answer (satisfactory for her anyway) for that, so he kept silent.

  “That’s what I thought,” she concluded. “She’s got no mother,” she began ticking off the list on her fingers. “Her father can’t be bothered, and Meredyth notices what she wants to notice when she wants to notice it.” She held up a hand as if to ward off a comment that Will had no intention of making. He was too busy trying to process the fact that his mother (his perpetually optimistic, it will all work out for the best in the end mother) was making what amounted to a scathing disparagement of another family’s internal dynamics -- in public!

  “I know she’s not Meredyth’s child, and it isn’t fair to expect Meredyth to fill that role when her father should be the one doing it. But still, in for a penny in for a pound. And she shouldn’t let her father get away with pushing it off on her if she isn’t going to do it whole heartedly. She’s always about what she looks like in public, and she’s gotten used to how being cursorily responsible for Lia’s welfare makes her look in public.”

  She seemed to be pausing for some sort of reaction on Will’s part, but he didn’t have one. His mother had never seemed anything but thrilled at the prospect of Wyatt marrying Meredyth. This assessment of the woman didn’t seem to match up with that in his head. “Now something has happened. It was Wyatt most likely. I know what his temper is and how he does go on. Meredyth probably jumped on the excuse to change the status quo. Something happened and someone overreacted, and now that poor girl has gotten shipped off from everything she knows just because they don’t want her to be in their way.” She paused to take a breath, but Will had nothing to say in the interim. What could he say? His worldview of his mother had just been upped on its head.

  “Well, there’s no reason that that poor girl should have to suffer just because the people who should be looking out for her decided she was an inconvenience. The least I can do is make sure that she knows that she isn’t forgotten.” Will finally got some semblance of thought gathered together. It wasn’t one that matched up with the information that he should be getting out of his mother, but it was what was swirling to the top of his thought process.

  “So, you don’t like . . .,” he started.

  “Pish-posh,” she pushed aside his unvoiced question with a wave of her hand. “What does liking have to do with anything?”

  It took him a few minutes to get his head together enough to pull the name of the school out of her. She was suspicious of why he would need to know, but she gave up the name anyway. He would be on her watch list for some time. He found that he could live with that. He was probably on her watch list for something or other all of the time. Apparently, everyone was. He didn’t want to spend too much time thinking about that. He preferred to keep his mother in her pleasant, prattling, harmless, and somewhat clueless box. He liked her in there. She fit in there. (Clearly, determined ignorance was his vice of choice.)

  He dutifully carted the information about Lia’s location back to Connor and chose to think of it no more. The reaction was more muted than he expected (Connor, when thinking clearly, apparently didn’t include him in the loop of who was allowed to know what was going on inside of Connor’s head), but it was there. Gratitude was expressed. Mostly, Will got what he wanted out of it -- the acknowledgement that he had gotten Connor something that he wanted that he had been unable to get on his own. The I owe you one vibe wasn’t formally voiced, but it was there. It was good to have. Connor, he was sure, would take that kind of unmentioned debt seriously. Will had capital that could be cashed in if he needed it. He liked to think that he wouldn’t need the leverage, but he wasn’t going to let denial handicap his options.

  Deep down, he didn’t like the thought that he would actually need to have leverage on Connor if the situation arose. There was something pleasant (despite the overwhelming frustration and annoyance that it also engendered) about being able to believe that Connor was above such things. After all, half of his frustration with Connor stemmed from the seemingly effortless way he always pounced on the right thing to do and went after it without thinking through the consequences. There were, however, the other things that never seemed to mesh properly with that view (Anna’s information sources and Lia Lawson’s involvement being at the top of that list).

  In the end, it all boiled down to the fact that he didn’t really know Connor -- not in the way that you should know someone you might have to rely on to have your back. He had things that he thought that he knew. He had things that seemed to oppose what he thought he knew, and all he really knew was that he didn’t know enough. He would have his leverage, and he might never need it (he didn’t want to ever need it in a way that had more to do with what was at stake for him than what he might discover about Connor’s character). It was still comforting to have it there, and that was all that really mattered.

  Karen was all that really mattered. He supposed that other people would argue that point with him, but that didn’t really have any influence on his view of things. A more proper phrasing of the sentence would likely be that Karen was all that really mattered to him. It was that self-centered streak again, but he had made his peace with that a long time ago. He didn’t need to be noble. He didn’t need to be heroic. He just needed everything to end with him in a normal little life with Karen by his side. He would do what he had to do to get there.

  Karen was nosey and loud and seemed to have made it the study of her life to be as annoying as she possibly could. Will wasn’t blind, and he wasn’t so enamored that he failed to realize all of those things. What he was was so enamored that he didn’t care about the rest of it. It might even be the recognition of all of those “flaws” of hers that had him so enamored. He hadn’t taken the time to parcel it out, and he had no intention of doing so. All of her rambunctious, in your face, grating ways made her real. There was nothing artful to her -- no facade to break beyond. There were no unknowns. There was nothing to figure out. What you saw was what you got.

  He liked that, he loved her, and he had no intention of letting anything mess up what he had managed to stumble across -- not even his own tendency to remain uninvolved. He was going to play ball with Connor Ridley in Connor Ridley’s way because it was the best hope he had of removing Meredyth’s ability to cause him damage. In the process, he might even learn to be pleased with the fact that he was doing the right thing.

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