Dirk then turned toward home. It was, as he probably ought to have guessed, too late, far too late. In the absence of family and a chaperone with any sort of authority, Nastaran had tried to release her childhood from herself through her own steps, taken in the middle of the night to the edge of the jetty that faced the barrier Alps. To the edge of the lake, and past the edge. Whether this was an accident during somnambulism or clear-eyed suicide, no one could ever say.
