Wanting and hope and fear. And she had tried to tell him. How many times had she tried to tell him? Except—enmeshed in his own sense of betrayal—he had not stopped to wonder how it felt to live in a world that rendered such a telling necessary. The burden she had borne, not just these past few weeks for his benefit, but all her life. Her strength abashed him, as it always had. Her valour moved him. And it was in that moment that he at last understood the truth that grief and shock had previously obscured: Viola Carroll lived. She had always lived. And it was he who had not recognised her.
