Dan always wondered why his parents had divorced. His mother was 21 when she had married Jonathon Feston, himself all of 23 years, and Dan had been bo...n just over a year later. They had both seemed like such a loving couple and it certainly wasn't because his mother had 'lost' any of her beauty. Heck, at 41, Susan Feston nee Carter could pass off as a sprightly 30 year old. Rumour had it that his father had shacked up with a little Asian beauty in his frequent travels. His mother wasn't the. "Tell her what? About the rope, or the cut, or... what?"~both~ Down in the gully, a low, rumbling growl sounded, distracting him from the sad expression on her face.Holiday Inn, Edinburgh, December 9thThe sky was clear and crisp over Edinburgh, the ancient city lurking low and dark in all its twisted narrow thoroughfares and lurking mediaeval behemoths. Arthur's seat lurched into the sky at the horizon, and the pale moonlight cut neatly into the room from above it, falling on Caerys' pale. I said it would have been nice to go home to the warm weather for a week, but I wouldn’t trade that for the two weeks we would have together. I was surprised that all three of them knew about it already as my mom had been discussing the whole thing with Carol and Cecile. Wonder what else they had been discussing? Cecile had made arrangements for the folks to stay in a house near the girls’ homes. One of the neighbors goes to the French Riviera every Christmas and New Years and welcomed the. Boiling anger rose inside of me—I mean, talk about public betrayals!—but Brandon spoke before I had a chance to. His voice was deceptively mild. "Maybe she's not very endowed physically, but she does have other things of use in these situations. Like compassion. And patience with bumbling stupidity. A lot more patience than she should, maybe."The veiled steel behind his words went right past Michael. "Chyeah, no kidding." Michael shook his head, a deprecating gesture. "You'd never get me to.