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He cleared his throat.

“Didn’t they, V?”

He picked up the clicker for the TV. “You want to watch something else?”

As he started flipping through movie channels, there was a whole lot of silence.

“I threw up at my sister’s funeral.”

V’s thumb paused on the remote, stopping on The Silence of the Lambs. He looked over at her. “You did?”

“Most embarrassing, shameful moment of my life. And not just because of when it happened. I did it all over my father.”

As Clarice Starling sat on a hard chair in front of Lechter’s cell, V craved information on Jane. He wanted to know the whole course of her life from birth to present, and he wanted to know it all now.

“Tell me what happened.”

Jane cleared her throat as if bracing herself, and he couldn’t ignore the parallel to the movie, with himself as the caged monster and Jane as the source of good, giving away bits and pieces of herself for the beast’s consumption.

But he needed to know like he needed blood to survive. “What happened, Jane?”

“Well, see…my father was a big believer in oatmeal.”

“Oatmeal?” When she didn’t go on, he said, “Tell me.”

Jane crossed her arms over her chest and stared at her feet. Then her eyes met his. “Just so we’re clear, the reason I’m bringing this up is so you’ll talk about what happened to you. Tit for tat. It’s like sharing scars. You know, like the ones from summer camp when you fell off the bunk bed. Or, like, when you cut yourself on the metal edge of a Reynolds Wrap box or when you hit yourself on the head with a—” She frowned. “Okay…maybe none of that is a good analogy, considering the way you heal, but work with me.”

V had to smile. “I get the point.”

“I figure fair is fair, though. So if I spill, you do. We agree?”

“Shit…” Except he had to know about her. “Guess we do.”

“Okay, so my father and the oatmeal. He—”

“Jane?”

“What?”

“I like you. A lot. Had to get that in.”

She blinked a couple of times. Then she cleared her throat again. Man, that blush looked good on her.

“You’re talking about the oatmeal.”

“Right…so…as I said, my father was a great believer in oatmeal. He made us all eat it in the morning, even in the summer. My mother and my sister and I had to choke that shit down for him, and he expected you to finish what was in your bowl. He used to watch us eat, like we were playing golf and in danger of getting our swing wrong. I swear, he measured the angle of my spine and my hold on the spoon. At dinner he used to—” She paused. “I’m rambling.”

“And I could listen to you talk for hours, so don’t focus on my account.”

“Yeah, well…focus is important.”

“Only if you’re a microscope.”

She smiled a little. “Back to the oatmeal. My sister died on my birthday, on a Friday night. The funeral was put together quickly, because my father was leaving to present a paper in Canada the following Wednesday. I found out later he’d scheduled that presentation the day Hannah was found dead in her bed, no doubt because he wanted to move things along. Anyway…day of the funeral, I get up and I feel horrible. Just wretched. Nothing but nausea. Hannah…Hannah was the only real thing in a house full of nice and pretty. She was messy and loud and happy and…I loved her so much, and I couldn’t bear that we were putting her in the ground. She would have hated being caged like that. Yeah…anyway, for the funeral, my mother went out and got me one of those coatdress getups in black. Trouble was, the morning of the funeral, when I went to put it on, it didn’t fit. It was too small, and I felt like I couldn’t breathe.”

“Naturally made the stomach worse.”

“Yup, but I got down to the breakfast table with only the dry heaves. Jesus, I can still remember what the two of them looked like sitting on either end, facing each other without making eye contact. Mother was like a china doll with quality-control problems—her makeup was on, her hair was in place, but everything was a little off. Her lipstick was the wrong color, she had no blush on, her chignon