Intensity

emotionally intact had been enough of a struggle for her. She was still a lost girl herself, fumbling blindly through the years for some insight or resolution that probably wasn't even out there to be found, yet she'd stood at that view port and promised deliverance.
         I am your guardian.
        She opened her folded hands. She flattened her hands on the table and slid them across the wood as if smoothing away wrinkles in a tablecloth, and as she moved, her chains rattled.
        She wasn't a fighter, after all, no one's paladin; she worked as a waitress. She was good at it, piling up tips, because sixteen years in her mother's bent world had taught her that one way to ensure survival was to be ingratiating. With her customers, she was indefatigably charming, relentlessly agreeable, and always eager to please. The relationship between a diner and a waitress was, to her way of thinking, the ideal relationship, because it was brief, formal, generally conducted with a high degree of politeness, and required no baring of the heart.
         I am your guardian.
        In her obsessive determination to protect herself at all costs, she was always friendly with the other waitresses where she worked, but she never made friends with any of them. Friendships involved commitment, risks. She had learned not to make herself vulnerable to the hurt and betrayal that ensued from commitments.
        Over the years, she'd had affairs with only two men. She had liked both and had loved the second, but the first relationship had lasted eleven months and the second only thirteen. Lovers, if they were worthwhile, required more than simple commitment; they needed revelation, sharing, the bond of emotional intimacy. She found it difficult to reveal much about her childhood or her mother, in part because her utter helplessness during those years embarrassed her. More to the point, she had come to the hard realization that her mother had never really loved her, perhaps had never been capable of loving her or anyone. And how could she expect to be cherished by any man who knew that she'd been unloved even by her mother?
        She was aware that this attitude was irrational, but awareness didn't free her. She understood that she was not responsible for what her mother had done to her, but regardless of what so many therapists claimed in their books and on their radio talk shows, understanding alone didn't lead to healing. Even after a decade beyond her mother's control, Chyna was at times convinced that all the dark events of all those troubled years could have been avoided if only she, Chyna, had been a better girl, more worthy.
         I am your guardian.
        She folded her hands on the table again. She leaned forward until her forehead was pressed to the backs of her thumbs, and she closed her eyes.
        The only close friend she'd ever had was Laura Templeton. Their relationship was something that she had wanted badly but had never sought, desperately needed but did little to nurture; it was purely a testament to Laura's vivaciousness, perseverance, and selflessness in the face of Chyna's caution and reserve, a result of Laura's dear heart and her singular capacity to love. And now Laura was dead.
         I am your guardian.
        In Laura's room, under the dead gaze of Freud, Chyna had knelt beside the bed and whispered to her shackled friend, I'll get you out of here . God, how it hurt to think of it. I'll get you out of here . Her stomach knotted excruciatingly with self-disgust. I'll find a weapon , she had promised. Laura, selfless to the end, had urged her to run, to get out. Don't die for me , Laura had said. But Chyna had answered, I'll be back .
        Now here came grief again, swooping like a great dark bird into her heart, and she almost let its wings enfold her, too eager for the strange solace of those battering pinions-until she realized that she was using grief to knock humiliation from its perch. Grieving, she would have no room for self-loathing.
         I am your guardian.
        Although the clerk had never fired the revolver, she should have checked it. She should have known. Somehow. Some way. Though she could not possibly have known what Vess had done with the bullets, she should have known .
        Laura had always told her that she was too hard on herself, that she would never heal if she kept inflicting new bruises on the old in endless self-flagellation.
        But