@page { margin-bottom: 5.000000pt; margin-top: 5.000000pt; } Chapter 15 I am sitting here trying to re-create my mother. She was once someone other than I knew her. She was beautiful, and fierce, and courageous and savage. She frightened people with her intensity, and allured them with it too. I lived with the intensity, each hour of each day I was around her, but I never met her spirit head on. Occasionally I caught momentary hints of it. They lasted nanoseconds. By the time I knew her, she had mellowed, she had saddened, and she had been crushed. I used to ask her to tell me about her childhood. She always changed the subject. I used to beg her, telling her that I was asking for myself, not for her. She made it clear to me that her past was closed. She revealed only four facts about her life. That she had been raped at the age of sixteen, and that I was the beloved product of that rape. That she hated Mary Knightly more than anyone had ever hated on this earth. That Dr. Berringer was right next to Mary on the list.
