Текст книги "Blind Rage"

Автор книги: Terri Persons

Соавторы: Terri Persons
сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 18 (всего у книги 21 страниц)

Chapter 38

THE BROTHERS TOOK turns recounting the story. It was a smooth retelling, almost practiced. Bernadette wondered how many times one had talked the other out of going to the authorities with it.

“Our parents were good people,” said Luke VonHader, his voice a monotone and his eyes fixed at some invisible target beyond the agents. “They went to church. Made sure we went.”

“Ten o’clock mass every Sunday,” said Matthew, his lids lowered as if he were nodding off.

“They put us in Catholic school,” Luke continued. “We had golf lessons. Tennis lessons. Piano. Growing up, we had everything.”

“All three of us, nothing but the best,” said Matthew.

“Someplace warm during Christmas break,” said the doctor. “Come the summer, a big family vacation. France. Scotland. Denmark. We went to Ireland three times.”

“Four times,” his younger brother corrected him. He looked from one agent to the other. “Can I have a drink? I could really use a drink.”

Garcia shook his head and addressed the doctor. “What went wrong?”

“Time. There was just no time,” said Luke, dragging his hand across his face. “My parents were busy. Father worked sixty hours a week. Mother had her volunteer work. Her charities and antiquing. They didn’t have time for traditional discipline. They were older and less patient, I suppose. They’d waited to have a family. With three high-spirited children, they took the quickest, most effective route to taming them. It was humane, in a sense. It left no marks. The worst you could accuse them of is—I don’t know—lazy parenting.”

“They weren’t sane,” said Matthew. “You of all people should be able to see that now.”

“Shut the hell up,” snapped the doctor.

Matthew turned to Bernadette. “Why would two otherwise fine people resort to water torture as a form of child discipline? They had to be crazy.” He looked at his brother with that last word, a term a psychiatrist would find vulgar, and repeated it with a smirk. “Crazy.”

“How did your parents do it?” asked Garcia.

“It was very civilized,” Luke said flatly. “Everyone had their role. Mother would fill the tub with cold water. Why waste hot water, right? Father was the judge, jury, and executioner. He determined who would receive the dunking and who of the other children would witness it.”

“Witness it?” Garcia asked. “Why a witness?”

Matthew shrugged. “I suppose to lend some sort of validity to it, a modicum of ceremony and propriety.”

“We offenders would put our hands behind us and lean over the side of the tub,” Luke continued. “Our sister usually tied her hair back herself, when she was the one being punished. Then Father would hold our heads under. The length of time we were held, the number of dunkings—all of that was up to Father. The more serious the offense, the worse the punishment. When we were toddlers, I imagine the length of time we were held in the water was minimal. As we got older—”

“Everyone was okay with this?” Garcia interrupted. “I can’t believe your mother went along.”

“Mother had experienced this sort of discipline at the hands of her parents,” said Luke. “She had no lasting physical damage and saw nothing wrong with using it on her own children.”

“You kids didn’t fight back?” asked Bernadette. “Why didn’t you run away or tell someone? You could have gone to a teacher. Another relative. A neighbor.”

Matthew sighed. “It had been a part of the fabric of our family for so long, we thought it was normal. We tolerated the dunkings the way other children accepted spankings or time-outs or getting grounded.”

Bernadette’s eyes narrowed as she addressed her next question to the doctor. “Have you used this on your kids?”

“Never,” he shot back. “I now recognize it as perverted. Abusive.”

“That revelation comes too late to help your sister,” said Garcia.

“You think we don’t beat ourselves up with that thought every day?” Matthew asked.

“Every minute of every day,” said Luke, his voice cracking. He dropped his head and his shoulders started vibrating.

Bernadette ripped a paper towel off a roll and tossed it to the weeping man.

“Save the boohoos for the jury,” said Garcia.

Bernadette shot a curious look at her boss.

“They’re leaving something out of this sob story.” Garcia tipped his head toward the doctor. “Tell her. Go ahead.”

Luke stayed silent.

“One of them killed their father,” Garcia explained. “Pushed him down the stairs. Told the cops the old guy fell.”

Bernadette, leaning her back against the counter, kept her gun on the pair. “Which one did it?”

Luke wiped his eyes while his younger sibling slouched in his seat. Neither man volunteered an answer.

“They’re fighting over who gets credit,” said Garcia.

She smiled tightly. “Sibling rivalry.”

“I did it,” Matthew blurted.

“He’s lying,” said his older brother, bunching the paper towel between his cuffed hands. “It was my call. He’d had a stroke … and I … wanted to put him out of his misery.”

Garcia said, “Who are you kidding? You hated his guts.”

Bernadette walked back and forth between the counter and the table. “Who raised his hand first?”

“Matthew confessed first,” said Garcia.

Bernadette studied the younger brother’s face. He’d never expressed the understanding of his parents’ behavior that his older brother had voiced. “Matthew did it, and the doc stepped in after Little Brother blabbed.”

Luke shook his head. “You’re wrong.”

“We’ll see who passes the polygraph and who doesn’t down at the police station,” said Garcia.

“That brotherly love thing again,” she said. “It’s serving them well—all the way to the jailhouse.”

“Speak of the devil,” said Garcia, seeing lights flashing across the kitchen windows.

Bernadette dropped her gun into her jacket pocket, went to the back door, and opened it. She held up her ID for two uniformed officers planted on the back stoop. “Can you give us a few minutes before you load them?”

The bigger cop looked into the kitchen and saw the two handcuffed men seated at the kitchen table. “Sure. This is your deal.” He glanced over at Garcia and said, “Hey.”

“Hey,” said Garcia.

“You’re Ed’s cousin, right?” asked the cop. “Ed in Homicide?”

“You betcha,” said Garcia. “Tell him I’m sending him a package.”

The officer gave Garcia a crooked grin. “We’ll hang out on the back steps.”

“Appreciate it,” said Bernadette, closing the kitchen door.

Seeing the officers jolted Matthew awake, and he was suddenly twitching in his seat. “Kyra Klein and the drownings in the river, we had nothing to do with those.” He nodded toward Garcia. “He says we did, but we didn’t.”

The horrific family history that the brothers had recounted at the kitchen table, paired with the April death of their sister, had to have some association with the murders. There was too much to be a coincidence. “Even if you didn’t do it, you know who did,” Bernadette told Matthew.

While the younger brother had touched back down to reality, his older sibling was drifting off. Drumming his fingers on top of the kitchen table, the doctor said in an eerily mechanical voice, “This is an early Victorian mahogany dining table. The piece is supported on beautifully proportioned fluted legs and came with two extra leaves, allowing it to extend to a length of nearly ten feet. It came with eight matching chairs, all but one with the original upholstery. I remember the day she picked up the set, at a well-attended auction outside of Chicago.”

“Your mother?” asked Garcia.

“The instant she laid her eyes on it, she had to have it. She called home so excited. She beat out two other bidders.” Luke meshed his fingers together, as if praying. “That same day my sister suffered a fall at the nursing home. Someone had dropped her during a bed transfer, breaking both her legs. When we told our mother, she acted as if we’d bothered her with some minor annoyance. We’d chipped a vase. The neighbor’s dog had excavated one of her rosebushes.”

“Doctor, please,” said Bernadette. “We need your help.”

“How?” asked Matthew. “How can he help? Tell us.”

The younger brother sounded sincere. Bernadette pulled out a chair and sat down across the table from the pair. “I believe someone close to your sister snapped when she died. He’s drowning these girls as some sort of—I don’t know—reenactment or something.”

“An old boyfriend?” asked Garcia.

Luke shook his head.

“Could I have a drink … of water at least,” Matthew croaked.

Bernadette got up, took down a glass from a cupboard, and went to the refrigerator. As she pressed the glass into the water dispenser, she scrutinized the Catholic mosaic decorating the front of the refrigerator. Handmade magnets in the shapes of crosses and flowers, undoubtedly produced by the doctor’s young daughters, held up church bulletins, fall fest raffle tickets, and Sunday school artwork.

Bernadette eyed one of the rare magnets not fabricated by a child’s fingers. “What’s this number?”

“What?” asked Luke.

She pulled the glass out of the dispenser and plucked the red octagon off the fridge. She set the water in front of Matthew and the magnet in front of his brother.

“My Suicide Stop Line,” Luke mumbled.

“You call if you have thoughts of suicide?” she asked.

“Yes.” He lifted his head. “Why?”

“Professor Wakefielder has been passing similar stickers out. A couple of the dead girls had this number. There’s the intersection between the prof and Dr. VonHader.” She walked around the kitchen table. “Who staffs the hotline?”

“Volunteers,” Matthew answered. “I’ve done it a few times.”

“Who else?”

“A slew of people,” answered Luke.

Garcia asked, “Where are you going with this?”

Bernadette said, “Do any of the volunteers also work in your office?”

“Several,” said Luke, his eyes wide and unblinking.

“Do any know the real story behind your sister’s institutionalization?”

“What?” Matthew blurted.

“It would have to be someone who knew how she first landed in the nursing home,” said Bernadette. “Who else knew about the … water discipline?”

“No one else,” said Matthew. “She was taking a bath by herself. Somehow went under. That was the story. We stuck to it all those years, even after Mother and Father passed away. Sometimes I wondered if it wasn’t the truth, we’d been saying it for so long.”

“You never told anyone else?” asked Garcia.

“We confided in no one,” Luke offered. “We trusted no one. It was only the two of us, and … Ruth.”

Bernadette noticed it was the first time anyone in the kitchen had uttered the dead woman’s name, and the word seemed to hang in the air like a cloud left behind by a smoker. Ruth. She was dead, as were so many other women. Shelby. Kyra. Corrine. Monica. Alice. Judith. Laurel. Heidi. She had no idea if Zoe belonged on the same list. Now another one was out there, waiting to be rescued—or buried. Regina.

“Think,” Bernadette said impatiently. “Perhaps someone overheard the two of you talking about Ruth. Someone at your office who also worked on the help line. Maybe you didn’t know they heard, but this person took a sudden interest in your sister. Asked questions. Even started visiting her in the nursing home.”

“Oh, God,” blurted Luke.

“What?” Garcia and Bernadette asked in unison.

“He had a crush on her,” Luke said. “Always had a crush on her, since they were kids.”

“Who?” Bernadette asked.

“But he never saw or heard anything,” Matthew said to his older brother.

Luke, his voice tremulous, added: “I caught him in the hall once, after one of her punishments. A bad one. He’d come into the kitchen and wandered upstairs. I didn’t think he saw anything. But his face, it was euphoric.”

“Is that when he started coming over more?” Matthew asked him.

“Yes,” Luke said numbly.

Garcia frowned at Bernadette. “Who are they—”

She held up her hand to silence her boss. The brothers were immersed in a trancelike exchange with each other. An outsider interrupting with a question might break the spell. Make them clam up.

Matthew, nodding slowly, said, “I remember. Suddenly, he was hanging around more. Our new best friend. Always walking in like he owned the place.”

Luke replied, “Mother and Father didn’t mind because both his parents were patients. Some sort of post-loss depression. They went to our church, too. Nice family.”

“Bullshit,” said Matthew. “The Araignees were as fucked up as our parents. Don’t you remember how they beat him? He’d come over with welts and bruises.”

“He got work as an aide at the nursing home,” said Luke. “He was always hanging around her room, even on his days off. I thought he was being a friend. After she died, he lost interest in the job. Came to work in my office.”

“Told you there was something wrong with him, but you trusted him because he plays golf and listens to public radio.” Matthew sneered at his older sibling. “You had him answering your phones, talking to those needy women, working on your precious suicide line.”

“I didn’t know,” Luke rasped.

Matthew snarled into his brother’s ear: “You’ve been his goddamn dating service.”

“Oh my God,” said Bernadette. It made sense.

“What?” asked Garcia, looking from Bernadette to the two handcuffed men. “Who are they talking about?”

“Wasn’t enough you hooked him up with the women in town here,” Matthew sneered. “You had to send him across state lines, to those classes in Wisconsin. How many girls there do you suppose he—”

“When?” interrupted Bernadette. “When was he in Wisconsin?”

Luke shook his head.

“July and August,” Matthew said.

“The La Crosse murders,” Bernadette said numbly.

“Who are they talking about?” asked Garcia.

“C.A.” She pushed back her chair and stood up. “Snaky son-of-a-bitch.”

Chapter 39

GARCIA STEERED THE Pontiac back on interstate 94 heading east and came to a dead stop as they neared the outskirts of downtown St. Paul. “Terrific,” he said.

“There must be an accident,” she said, trying to look around the minivan in front of them.

Traffic inched forward enough for Garcia to take an exit. “I’m getting off this parking lot.”

The downtown roads were as snarled as the interstate. “Don’t people stay in anymore?” Bernadette muttered, glaring through the passenger window at a knot of diners leaving a restaurant.

Garcia, screeching around a slow-moving compact, said, “Some folks have a life.”

She relaxed a little when they finally got on the Wabasha Bridge, aiming for a St. Paul neighborhood just south of downtown. Bluffs dotted with trees overlooked downtown and the river. Beyond the trees were homes, including one belonging to Charles Araignee, receptionist moonlighting as a serial killer. She’d considered him a bit player in this drama—the doctor’s errand boy—and now he was turning out to be the main attraction. The first time she’d even heard his last name was when the brothers uttered it at the kitchen table. The spiders in her dream finally made sense: Araignée was French for “spider.”

Unlike downtown, there were few cars on the road and no one on the sidewalks. On the right was a green tower containing steps that started at the top of the bluffs and led straight down to Wabasha. The structure reminded her of a forest ranger’s fire lookout.

When they got to Prospect Boulevard, the street that topped the bluffs, Garcia pulled the Grand Am to the curb and turned off the engine. The agents silently surveyed their surroundings. A knee-high stone wall ran along the top of the bluff, and at one end of the stone barrier was a sidewalk that led to the green tower. The lighting in the neighborhood was like that around the rest of the city, with green poles topped by antique-looking lamps. While there was enough light to see down the streets and sidewalks, the wooded bluff beyond the stone wall was black. No homes were perched along the sides of the hill itself. At the very bottom were caves dug into the sides of the hill. They were once used for a variety of ventures (Bernadette remembered reading something once about a mushroom grower), but now most of them were filled in. It was a strange slice of St. Paul that seemed better suited to a wilderness area than to a city.

“What was the address again?” asked Garcia as he shoved his car keys in his coat pocket.

She fished a yellow square out of her pocket and tipped the note toward the light cast by the streetlamp. “The doc said Chaz doesn’t live on the boulevard. He’s on one of the streets running behind it.”

Garcia reached under his seat and pulled out the Hudson’s Street Atlas, flipped until he got to the neighborhood, and handed it to her. “We should have called for backup.”

“We’ll call when we get there,” she said as she studied the map. After taking so many wrong turns in this case, she wanted to make sure Charles was indeed holding Regina Ordstruman at his home and not at another location. It’d be an embarrassment to the bureau and a humiliation to Garcia in particular if an army descended on an empty house.

“You know where we’re going?” he asked.

“Yeah.” She closed the book and dropped it on the seat between them.

“Okay.” He reached past his coat and blazer, took out his Glock, and slipped it into his trench pocket.

She popped open the passenger door and reached inside her jacket pocket to touch her gun. “I’m ready.”

As they stepped out of the car, Bernadette felt the nighttime scenery rock and tilt. She could have been standing on the deck of a boat. Waiting for the sensation to pass, she kept her hand on the open door of the Pontiac.

As he shut the driver’s door, Garcia looked at her. “Are you okay?”

“Something’s going on with this guy, and it’s happening to me, too.” She steadied herself and closed the passenger door.

Garcia came around to her side of the Grand Am with his cell in his hand. “I’m going to—”

“Don’t call anyone yet.”

“Are you going to be any good to me?”

“I’m fine.”

“Your session with the scarf was hours ago,” said Garcia, dropping his phone back in his pocket. “Why are you still picking up vibes from this asshole?”

“I have no idea.” A gust of wind sent leaves tumbling down the sidewalk. Shivering, she snapped her jacket closed up to her throat and pulled her gloves tighter over her fingers. She swore her tolerance for the cold had diminished since her tumble into the river.

“How far?” asked Garcia as they crossed the quiet street.

“A couple of blocks,” she said.

“Same drill as with the VonHader boys,” said Garcia as they went down the sidewalk. “We’ll scope it out before we make any big moves. If he’s not home …”

“Then he’s got her somewhere else.”

“You’re sure he’s got someone?”

She hated hearing that doubt in his voice. No wonder he’d given up so readily on calling for backup. “If you don’t believe my sight, believe the prof. Wakefielder’s got a student missing.”

After less than a block of walking, her chills turned into a hot sweat. She unsnapped her jean jacket and let the wind buffet her body. As the cold seeped through her shirt and hardened her nipples, another sensation invaded her body: lust. It had to be him again. She’d never had such an enduring and intense link to a killer. With previous murderers, she’d shared feelings so briefly. Why Charles was different dumbfounded her. Getting rid of him and his sick psyche was going to be a tremendous relief.

Reaching the corner, she scrutinized the street sign to make sure they were headed in the right direction. “One more block,” she said, and they kept going.

After a few minutes of silence, Garcia blurted: “Your work on this case—”

She cut him off with a wave of her hand. “Don’t go there, Tony. I know I screwed this up from the get-go.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The prof did it. Matt did it. No, wait, Luke did it. Maybe they all three did it. Shit. It’s none of them. The fucking butler did it.”

“You nailed it in the end,” he said. “The brothers are at the cop shop.”

“Yes, but not for the dead girls. Plus the VonHaders’ attorney will get them home in time for their morning Wheaties.”

“But we’re on our way to bagging the worst bad guy. It’s all good.”

“That’s why you keep asking if I’m sure he’s got another victim with him.”

“I believe you.”

He sounded unconvinced, but she let it go.

Every other home they passed had decorations in the yard or on the porch. Plastic tombstones. Rubber skeletons. Witches on broomsticks. Carved pumpkins. Bales of hay. Dried cornstalks propped against fences and dried ears of corn tacked to front doors. “When’s Halloween?” she asked.

“I don’t know; it’s coming up.”

“We don’t have a life, do we?” They hung a right, both of them walking briskly while eyeing the houses around them and the collection of cars parked on the street. No one was out and about.

Charles’s place was the last house on a dead-end street. The VonHaders told them that he had inherited some money from an aunt and had used it to buy and refurbish the place. Unfortunately, they’d never been inside and couldn’t give the agents a layout of the interior.

Standing at the top of a steeply graded lot, it was perched like a castle. In the valley on one side of Charles’s place was a boarded-up house. In the dip on the other side was a patch of hardwoods and evergreens, a natural barrier that made up the dead end.

A sedan was parked on the street in front of Charles’s house, and Bernadette figured it was his. It was an old gold Lincoln Town Car without a spot of rust on it, probably another inheritance from the aunt. She went over to the windows facing the sidewalk, pulled out a small flashlight, and looked inside. Immaculate. She punched off the light and dropped it back in her pocket.

They climbed the long steps leading up to his doorstep but stopped and crouched down before they reached the top. His home was one of the largest in the neighborhood, with an open porch stretched across the front. It was a two-story structure with a tower in front that could contain a third-floor room.

“A Victorian,” she whispered. “Queen Anne style.”

“Listen to the architecture expert.”

“The windows in front are black,” she observed.

“Let’s go in around back, through the woods,” Garcia said. “If we stay low, we should be good.”

They took the steps down and darted into the woods, going from tree to tree until they could see Charles’s backyard. A wooden privacy fence boxed it in, but there was a gate facing the woods. Planted on one side of the gate was a lamppost; Bernadette didn’t like how bright it was. An alley ran behind the fence, and beyond that were the garages of the neighbors. Some of them had floodlights mounted over their doors. It looked like Charles didn’t have a garage.

The pair hiked up the hill leading to the backyard and went to the gate. It was unlocked, and they slipped inside. A screened porch ran across the back, and a bright floodlight was mounted over the porch door. As the pair walked deeper into the yard, she could see that a small square and a large rectangle on the second story were lit.

“He’s home,” she whispered, pointing up.

Garcia nodded. They spotted a garden shed planted in a far corner of the yard and squatted down next to it. “Now what?” he whispered.

“Stay here,” she whispered.

Before he could argue, she ran for the back of the house. She hadn’t picked a lock in some time and hoped she could instead get inside the easy way. She spotted a doormat in front of the porch’s bottom step and lifted it up. Nothing underneath. She retrieved a rock sitting to the right of the steps and checked the bottom but didn’t find what she was looking for. The stone next to it was a dud, too, but the third rock she tried was the charm. She pried off a trap door in the fake rock and probed the compartment with her finger. “Good deal,” she muttered, fishing out a key.

The screen door was locked, but it took only a few jiggles of the handle to unlock it. Holding tight to the door so the wind wouldn’t slap it open, she went through and closed it behind her. She ran her eyes around the long, narrow space. Wicker chairs, couches, and coffee tables were neatly grouped, as if awaiting a party. Dried floral arrangements and candles topped each of the tables. Hanging from the ceiling, swaying slightly in the wind, was a chandelier containing tapered candles. Oriental area rugs covered the floor. The creep’s porch was furnished more stylishly than her condo.

Bernadette went up to one of the windows and pressed her face against the glass. The curtains on the other side blocked her view. Taking a deep breath, she stepped up to the door and inserted the key in the lock. She could feel the deadbolt turn. She put her hand on the knob and pushed the heavy wooden door open. A narrow band of white—the floodlight—followed her inside. She heard a creak behind her and turned to see Garcia stepping inside, carefully closing the porch door behind him.

They moved directly into the kitchen, a renovated galley. A butcher-block table was in the middle of the space, and modern glass-front cabinetry and steel appliances lined the walls. Heavy footsteps overhead made her freeze. She thought she heard music as well.

She closed the door behind her and turned the deadbolt; she didn’t want to make it easy for him to flee. Garcia watched her hands but said nothing.

Moving carefully across the wooden floor, they headed for the door at the far end of the kitchen, with Garcia taking point. The kitchen’s old-fashioned swinging doors opened into the formal dining area, a space with a long table surrounded by antique chairs. Then came a front room. Looking to the right through the parlor, they could make out the spindled railing of stairs leading up to the second floor. A bookcase was built into one side. The lace-covered windows at the front of the house had a dull glow from the streetlamps outside.

As they drew closer to the stairs, they could see a light at the top. Flattening themselves against the bookcase, they listened. Someone was singing, but she couldn’t understand the words. It was an opera. She heard another voice; Charles was singing along.

Garcia slid closer to the foot of the stairs. They heard a thump at their feet and started. Garcia had knocked a fat book off the shelf. Reaching into their pockets, they pulled out their guns and waited for their quarry to come down the stairs, but he continued with his singing.

Garcia moved to the foot of the stairs, crouched down, and aimed up. She did the same. There was a landing, after which the steps took a sharp turn and continued their ascent. It was the vision from her session with the scarf. They were in the right place. Had they come soon enough to save Regina Ordstruman, or was she already dead?

Taking out her flashlight, Bernadette ran the beam around the floor near the front door. Dark splatters dulled the shiny wood, but there were no big puddles. If he’d stabbed her to death, he’d done it elsewhere. Garcia came up next to her, stared at the blood, and reached into his pocket. Bernadette put her hand up. She didn’t want him calling yet; she wanted to find the girl first. With a hard-set mouth, he pulled his hand out of his pocket. She clicked off the light, and they went for the stairs.

She put one foot on the middle of the first step and winced at the creak. She took the second step by setting her foot on the left side of the stair. Silence. Garcia followed behind her, both of them hugging the left.

Squatting behind the potted palm, they looked up from the landing. Through an open doorway, light and music spilled into the hallway. He’d stopped singing. Had he heard them taking the stairs? There was a pause in the music. Perhaps he was switching CDs. She prayed for new tunes that would get him singing again.

Her prayer was answered. Miraculously, she even recognized what he was playing. It was the music from The Phantom of the Opera. He was singing along again and not doing a half-bad job.

Holding their weapons in both hands, they finished their trek up the stairs. They made a squeaky beeline for the hallway table. Squatting next to it, they heard a toilet flush and water running. He was in the master bathroom, a logical venue for his operatic performance. While Charles launched into “The Music of the Night,” she thought about their next move. They needed information from him, but not at the expense of the girl’s life.

The hallway in front of her started to blur and spin. The dizziness was back, and more intense than before. If she folded, she’d give them away before they found the girl. Reaching up, she clutched the edge of the hallway table for support.

“Shit!” he yelled from inside the bathroom. “Fucking razor.”

Feeling something sting her cheek, she stifled a yelp. Something wet dripped onto her gloved fist. Behind her, Garcia lightly touched her arm. She turned her head and saw his eyes widen with shock. Using her teeth, she pulled off her right glove. Reaching up, she gingerly touched her cheek and examined her fingers. Blood. He’d cut himself—and she was bleeding. Their connection was growing closer by the minute, and she had to sever it soon before she lost herself in him.