Namaste. It was a Nepalese greeting. It meant: The light within me bows to the light within you.

Turn away. From the darkness, the madness, the pain. Open your eyes and look at the light.

But his words fall away. He looks confused. He looks flustered and sorry. Like you do when you run up to someone you think you know and take her arm and she turns around and you were wrong.

There were times when I lifted my face to the sky, stretched my arms wide to the winter night, and laughed out loud, so happy was I. The memory of it makes me laugh now, but not from happiness. Be careful what you show the world. You never know when the wolf is watching.

Because in a small dark room, a broken child lies on a filthy bed and stares up at a high window. He waits for me, too. And I—I who have failed at everything and have failed everyone—I must not, I cannot, I will not fail him.

There is only one thing I fear now-love. For I have seen it and I have felt it and I know that it is love, not death, that undoes us.

She was his soulmate, as much a part of him as the very flesh and bone that made him. She was with him, in him, in everything he did. She was everything he wanted from his life, the very measure of his dreams.