The Maidens

The first-person narrator returns. He describes stumbling across a fox and feeling that he was “seeing God.” The writer felt safe and at peace until the fox departed, at which point he felt “alone, and split in two” (97), longing for wholeness. The writer is trying to remember something that he fears and wonders if it is “retribution for [his] crimes?” (98).

The next morning Mariana visits Zoe, who is studying revenge tragedies. Zoe apologizes for implying that Mariana is a poor substitute for Sebastian, and Mariana is understanding. She recalls that Zoe had always connected more with Sebastian, even as a child. After leaving Zoe, Mariana phones her patients in London to tell them that she will be out of town due to “a family emergency” (101). Only Henry takes it poorly, claiming Mariana does not care about him and saying that he is watching and can see her. Mariana ends the call “unnerved.”

Mariana questions whether she should involve herself in the investigation but finds her thoughts returning to the case. She believes the answer to who killed Tara lies in uncovering the victim’s secrets. The killer, whom Mariana assumes is male given the violence of the crime, must be suffering, perhaps because of childhood trauma: Having been denied empathy, he thus had been unable to develop it.