Veronica knew I was on the rebound. We took long walks and told each other everything about ourselves, or so I believed at the time. She was very symp...thetic and as I eventually discovered, she was also cunning.One of the things that attracted me to Veronica was that, besides her beauty, we had something in common; she had severed all relations with her family too, but I soon discovered we were estranged from our families for different reasons. I refused to go home because my brother had stolen. She chose her usual bay, third from the left, put her range bag down on the brass littered concrete floor, unzipped the bag, and carefully set her beloved Glock 34 on the bench rest, accompanied by three empty magazines and two fifty count boxes of 9mm ammunition. It was just her and the waiting silence of the target, 50 metres downrange. Loading each magazine, putting on her shooting glasses, putting on her hearing protection...this was all part of the ritual, leading up to the Zen moment when. After grabbing an extra blanket from the hall closet and stuffing it under his arm, he quietly opened her door. The room was dark and frigid. The moon streaming through her window offered some visibility as he set his beer on the dresser and moved towards the bed. Sarah was in the fetal position, huddled beneath a mountain of blankets with just her head left uncovered. She was already asleep.Michael just stared down at her for several long seconds, absorbing the beauty of his young daughter.. " You talk to her, but you don't know what you say?" Nothing." Jamie, you can't talk about nothing," I insisted. "Do you talk aboutyou? Do you talk about your friends? Do you talk about me?" Ihesitated and then asked him, "Do you talk about your father? Pleasetell me."I could see tears forming in the corners of his eyes and heard a quietsob. Obviously it was something very personal and he wasn't comfortablesharing it with me. Maybe I was right about the doll being an emotionaloutlet for.