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I started the book in Germany in the winter and worked con stantly on it in small mountain towns that had few tourists. Writing was the only time in the day when Saxony wasn't on my mind. I've cried, I've loathed myself for not having saved her, and I miss her more than anything else. In fact I think I might miss her more now than I ever loved her. If that phrase sounds strange, I'm sorry, but it's the best I can do now.
I also began it because I needed something solid to work on while I tried to figure out what I was going to do. The only thing I knew for sure was that someday I would turn around in Holland or Greece or someplace and see a familiar Galen face smiling evilly at me. But how long would they pursue me? Forever? Or only until they were sure that I wasn't going to get them back for Saxony's death? I started the biography of my father to take my mind off my moment-to-moment fears, and because Sax had said that it would be good for me, and because I wanted to.
There were very few long entries in my diary that year. Just brief words of excitement and depression that I would jot down when I could pull myself away from the life of Stephen Abbey, movie star.
I had just gotten him from North Carolina to New York to try out for Broadway when I went to the post office one day and happened to see a package addressed to one Richard Lee, in care of Gasthaus Steinbauer, on a table behind the window clerk. Thank God for small European post offices. Bags and notes were in my brand-new Deux Chevaux in three seconds, and I was on my way down the mountain as fast as that frogmobile would go.
I stayed in Stresa for almost three months because it was lovely and empty, and Lieutenant Henry and his Catherine had rested there before they rowed across Lake Maggiore to Switzerland.
It was so stupid to send Lee after me, but maybe it had a purpose. Maybe now that he's back, they're trying to purify Galen completely – no more real people, no more normals in Marshall France Town. At least then A
It doesn't make any difference. We waited for him in Zermatt and killed him on a small side street in the middle of the night.
"Hey there, Richard!"
"Tom, Tom Abbey! What do you say!"
He had a long corrugated knife that he was trying to hold close to his side. He smiled and looked around as he walked toward me, just in case any friends of mine happened to be nearby.
When Richard was five or six feet away, Pop stepped out of the pitch dark behind me and said lightly over my shoulder, "Want me to hold your hat for you, kiddo?"
I screamed with laughter and shot right into the middle of Richard's sad, astonished face.