No words had been spoken nor were needed. She sat and he took his chair again. Kristine was the first to speak. ‘My goodness, I can’t believe your...actually here,’ the sincerity in her voice ringing clearly in his ears. Among all the women he had known in his life, she was one of the few whose smile actually reached her eyes. ‘Did you have trouble finding the restaurant?’ she inquired with a slight tilt of her head. ‘Not really,’ he replied, a twitch of a grin at the corner of his mouth, ‘after. It was acknowledgment of her position as much as acknowledgment of the genuine friendship that existed between the two and had been there since they were children. Such meetings were generally the way Neral kept her up to date on more sensitive issues. That part of the meeting over, Evaline took on a more playful attitude,’Your mother looked well when I saw her yesterday.’ Neral looked to the sky, perhaps in silent prayer to the Goddess, ‘How are the two of them?’ When Evaline looked at her. She didn’t have the energy to sit there and watch Karl’s act. He was a talented motherfucker, to say the least. He had fooled her once. He just sat there, head bowed, looking like a little boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Knuckles went white as she gripped the steering wheel and let out a guttural scream. Tears followed, head bowed as she sobbed into the leather. It was better to get it out now then to make Dimitri go through all this too. He had been so sweet, but he looked. He headed down the small set of stairs to the ground and came around the side of the small house, his kayak was already banging up against the small storage room built under the house. He pulled it around and stuffed it as best as he could in the small shed. Next he took the bicycle and chained it to a pole that held up the stairs. Finally after what seemed like an eternity, he headed back into the house, time to close the shutters. as he closed the first shutter to his bedroom window, he heard.