Look at the rest of them, jabbering and squawking like a bunch of crows. I can't help comparing them. They don't feel their pain, they run from it, avoid it, refuse to look at it. At least HE was willing to tear open the wounds, to let them bleed, to let the infection run out until he was healed. He was more human than most of this family - he - the monster! Isn't that what Stokes once called him - a monster? How could I love a monster? He feels his pain, his loss, his joy - he is in touch with two hundred years of emotion.

And Angelique! How the Collins hated her, reviled her name, for what she did to him - to the family. At times, though, I sympathize with her - her emotions, her motives. I understand how the love could become so overwhelming, the NEED to be recognized, to be acknowledged, to be important. They don't notice much, the Collins - most of them self-absorbed and insensitive. But I myself have felt the rage that could have placed a curse if I had the power she possessed. If I had owned her dark gift, there were times the curses would have flown through the night like fireflies. Would I have made him what he is? No. But I would have found a way to compel him to love me, when the hurt got so bad...but, no, not my dear friend. Friend? I call him that, as he does me, but are we friends? Would I be sickened to see him preparing for his wedding day, to someone else, someone other than me, some young ingenue who couldn't have the depth of love I feel, the love that comes from years of knowledge and experience, years of those fireside talks at night, years of shared trials and mishaps --why, he has been mine for years! Could I tolerate some other woman usurping my place at his side? Could I bear to be forgotten, to be left behind at the family reception, while he went off to be alone with his bride? The thought makes me ache, and yet...yet...I am his dearest, his truest friend, the one he can count on, the one he can trust. While the smooth cheeked younger women have come and gone, passing through his life like the seasons, I have remained constant - wouldn't it still be so, even if?

I don't know. There have been times when we were so close, so close that I thought he might put his hands on my shoulders slowly, carefully, look into my eyes, smile - times when I thought he might kiss me at last, might recognize that I am the one who has always been there for him, the truest, the deepest, the dearest. But would I be afraid? Would it change everything between us, the easy comfortable way he orders me around, the way I can speak my mind with him without doubt or inhibition? What would it change? Would I want to need someone like I would then, would I want to grieve for him someday the way he did for Josette through these long decades?