HELEN
I stood there for a moment after the door closed behind my mother.
I simply stared at the space where she had been, as though somehow looking at the closed door long enough would make her words disappear.
They didn't.
They remained in my mind, repeating themselves with an unpleasant clarity.
I saw it in his eyes.
You can't protect him from what's inside of him.
I closed my eyes for a moment.
I had always known. That was the part I didn't want to admit, even to myself.
I had known for years. Maybe I had known from the beginning.
There had always been something different about Alexander. Something inside him that I had recognized long before he was old enough to understand it himself.
It wasn't simply anger. It wasn't even his unusually violent temper. It was something much
