The events since Clarise’s death and the trip to Windermere may have precipitated a minor crisis. In any event, Mark worried, his Annie wasn’t herself and even the next to new car didn’t excite her as he anticipated.
His protective instincts jumped in to try to save the day for them both. Annie remained listless and other worldly in a sense that, in the words of a song, she was from another planet, forever young, or something in between that Mark hadn’t figured out yet.
Suspicion was diverted from Annie and Rowena to his aunt’s boyfriend. Mark thought that in itself should clear up some room in Annie’s psyche for celebration, but the death of his aunt seemed to affect her more than it did him in some way inexplicable to him. Perhaps the death of her mother, the abdication of her father f
