I kissed his cheek but felt like swine for doing it while grisly scenes of dropped or smothered babies swarmed behind my eyes. Dominik wasn’t even an hour and a half old, and I already dreamed of his many possible deaths. I could understand the devil because wickedness whispered to me at the edge of my consciousness. I knew saintliness because I loved this stranger too much to heed the temptations of violence and death. Dame Verena’s talk about sacrifice bobbed half-remembered in my memory. I understood what she meant, because I knew only sacrifice from now on. I felt immaterial; as long as this boy grows up, that will be my happiness.
