I knew it from the order record and the account of his plans.

I would not turn it into a second inscription simply because it comforted me more than the first.

He had wanted to say both things at different moments.

Love, then anger.

A promise of devotion, then an instruction not to trust the woman whose secret he had helped keep.

I did not have to choose one moment and use it to destroy the other.

Patrick had loved me for forty years.