There was nothing left to manage, nothing to fear from being caught, because I wanted to be caught watching — wanted him to reach the pen, wanted the nib to touch the page, wanted him to complete the crime so completely that no lawyer alive could talk him out of it.

I had spent five years terrified of his every move.

And here, at the end, I sat perfectly still and let him make the last one.

And my father opened his eyes.

It was not the clouded, drifting waking of a dying man.

He looked straight at Devon with a fierce, whole lucidity that froze my husband where he stood.