Status Updates From Our Hideous Progeny

The silence that hung between Henry and me as we sat together on the bench outside the inspector's office was - like the velvet drapery in the Sutherland family drawing room - long, heavy, and entirely unpleasant.

Part of me wishes I regretted it. It says something about me, I think, that I do not. Perhaps it says that I am a monster. Or perhaps it says that I am simply committed to a sense of justice in the world -- the sort of justice which I knew would never be served in a court, or in the public eye, or upon a Society page.

I looked away. There it was, that ache again - but I had weighed it already, carefully, and painstakingly, against the weight of the life in my hands, and it had come out wanting. I shook my head. It will not have been for nothing, I wanted to cry - no matter what happens - don't you see? Because it is already worth something. Even in the dark. Even if no one loves it but me.