Leaning forward with her hands braced on her knees, Viola traded her smile for a look of solemn expectation, for she knew why I must have come. “It’s my dream, isn’t it?” she said softly. I spoke quietly, too, in respect of the sleeping children. “Tell me again.” “I saw myself, a hole in my forehead, my face…broken.” “You think you were shot.” “Shot dead,” she confirmed, folding her hands together between her knees, as if in prayer. “My right eye bloodshot and swollen all ugly, half out of the socket.”
