CHAPTER 18It all seemed so crazy and useless, some way…or it did until I started to say so and looked down at the white young face in the lamplight. Then it didn’t…or it didn’t look quite so crazy, at any rate.
“It isn’t right for anybody to suffer for what other people do,” Jennifer said. Her voice and the meaning of it seemed almost disembodied in the lonely house, like echo murmuring a soft undertone when the sound had stopped.
I started to say, “Then why don’t you do something about it?” but I didn’t. I felt helpless. All the standards of reason and practically seemed suddenly so invalid, faced with the shadowy thing I didn’t understand but that I knew held Jennifer and Rusty and all the rest of them in a grasp as real as any reality I’d ever known.
She picked up the lamp.
“Aunt Ca
