Michael Malone - Weebly

patted one of Chin's. In her living room the old woman
sat beside the girl and promised her not only a
livelihood but a home, should she, for any reason, ever
require one. Miss Lattice had kept Chin safe for herself
until after dinner. But then, prompted by Winslow
Abernathy's unexpected visit in the early evening while
Chin was out searching the neighborhood one last time
for Night, Miss Lattice had been forced by her
conscience to tell her guest that her husband would
probably be returning to Madder before morning. Yet,
she added, let Chin stay until he called her. He would
see her note. There was no need to go now. It was too
upsetting to think of her walking in the dangerous dark
to the trailer park, waiting in the dangerous dark for
someone. For someone, Prudence was thinking, like
Maynard Henry, whom she had never met, but
imagined as a vague, violent shape, unpredictable, huge,
and menacing. Insistent on his own will, ravenous with
those impulses to seize and plunder and kill that were
ungovernable, and mysteriously male. Like her brother,
dead at war.
Or the person who had murdered Scheherazade.