Chimes: 2018 Edition (emended Blazevox book pdf)

#54
A sense of things not being right manifested in the new house immediately. I had
nothing to say to the enchantress or her children; they had nothing to say to me.
Dad’s gaiety became shrill and forced. I had no good advice for him; he had given
me a role I could not begin to fulfill. Within six weeks, the enchantress and her
children were gone, back to the husband and father they had abandoned. Dad and I
were alone in a creepy house, a shadow of the one we had so lately left. Dad’s
reaction to this stunning failure was to ape superiority; that though everything had
gone wrong it was not his responsibility. Others had let him down. He had always
been flinty; he became flintier. I was overwhelmed by the feeling of having been
involved in a spectacular mess; I felt and shared Dad’s criminality, which he himself
had (to and for himself) abjured. I bore the burdens that he would not.
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