“She,” he said, nodding at the corpse on the table, “was a fine woman who deserved better. She had a kindness and grace rarely seen in this place, and I always knew I wasn’t worthy. It made me hate, and drink and seek death in the Interior. I know this is my end, I know my own son will kill me this night, and I know it to be fitting.” He hadn’t, of course, said any of this. These words were born of the nightmare. In fact he had said, “Your ma was a whore. Fucked if I ever knew you were even mine.” It didn’t matter, though in the succeeding years Clay would often lie to himself that it had been
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