“Here is where you leave me, Lan,” he whispered, stroking the smooth curve of her head the way he used to stroke her hair. “And if I were a better man, I would let you go, even where I cannot follow, to have that perfect peace I can never share. If I loved you as you surely deserve to be loved, I would bury you in some good place and set a stone above you that reads Here she lies whom God alone shall raise up. And I would grieve and go on alone.”
