Chapter One
The moment before the clergyman folded back the carton flaps the
world stood still and she saw everything with a greater clarity. The
robust man in his middle years had a diamond shaped birthmark on his
cheek that looked like a distorted pale rose teardrop. His face was
angular and strong, his thinning hair combed back, his hands massive
and rough, like those of a boxer. The books behind him covered the
whole wall in a mosaic of alternating colors. The late afternoon
Free State sun threw a shaft of light onto the desktop, a magic
sunbeam across the box.
She pressed her hands lightly against the coolness of her bare
knees. Her hands were perspiring, her eyes searching for clues in
the slightest shift of his expression, but she saw only calm,
perhaps some suppressed, benign curiosity about the content of the
carton. In the moment before he lifted the flaps, she tried to see
herself as he saw her evaluate the im ...
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