She said that when the first-born died at two years old, she split into two cores: one potential child, the other potential adult. She explained how both cores slept and that mirror-images had been created for them, to absorb what happened to the other selves. The cores themselves, she said, absorbed none of the abuse. “The cores,” the woman said, “sleep on Mean Joe’s shoulder. I know, I can feel him protecting them. I just didn’t know what they were.” “Mean Joe is their safety,” Catherine said. “The cores may have the same kind of memory you do. Nothing more than a far-off sense of the abuse,
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