The color went out of Agatha’s face and came back red.

“You can’t be serious. You would throw away years of real charitable work over one bitter maid with a grudge?”

Bruce looked at me. He looked at my lip, which was bleeding where her ring had caught it.

Then his eyes moved down to my forearms, to the long sleeves I always wore, and to the edge of a bruise that the sleeve did not quite cover.

Something in his face changed and went very cold and very quiet.

“I’m not throwing away your work,” he said.