“Hmm.” She slid her hand over the soft duvet. “I’m not. If he’d been kind, I wouldn’t have met Pierre. If I hadn’t met Pierre, I wouldn’t have learned how to shoot. And if I hadn’t learned how to handle a gun, Isaac Adler would never have hired me, and I wouldn’t have gotten to raise Jarod and then you.” She ran a knuckle across my cheek. “I believe everything happens for a reason. Even the terrible things.” Mimi mistook my silence for lack of understanding, because she added, “What doesn’t destroy you will reshape you. Remember this, Celeste. Remember that the same fire that transforms sand
...more
