“No.” She sighed dramatically. “Though I always have wondered if God was actually a man..”
“You were angry.”
“Yes.”
“You were jealous.”
“Yes.”
“You wanted to confront them.”
“Yes.”
“And to frighten them.”
She was quiet for a second, then smiled.
“Yes.”
He held her gaze. “Did you intend to kill them?”
She smiled back at him far too long.
Then: “I said I changed my mind.”
“That is not the same as saying no.”
Her eyes glinted. “You’re good. No, that not the same as saying ‘no’”
She looked him over openly now, “You don’t seem shocked easily.”
“I have heard a lot of stories in this room. So, no.”
“That must disappoint some people.”
“It tends to disappoint people who are trying to provoke me.”
The considered each other like opponents in a gunfight..
Then she laughed, bright and brief. “Oh, I do like you.”
He made no acknowledgment of that at all.
“You said you changed your mind,” he continued. “What stopped you?”
Matilda’s expression shifted into something almost sulky. “The child was looking at me.”
He waited.
“She has his eyes,” Matilda said.
“And?”
“And I suddenly couldn’t bear it.”
“Because?”
For the first time, she looked away. Just a flicker toward the reinforced window before the walls went down.
