I'm nothing like my mother.
Jarod perceived evidence to the contrary: mother and daughter shared blood, name, face.
He challenged softly, "Aren't you?"
Parker's consistent rebuttal—wrought, undoubtedly, by decades of comparisons, and imagined deficiencies—suddenly wasn't.
"Aren't you," Jarod repeated, unaware that this whispers had transitioned to whimpers, and, then, piercing, sustained wails.
He lifted his face, wet with tears, and directed a mute accusation at the coffin in which her mother had never rested peacefully, and hoped, hoped, that with both murders avenged and Raines dead, she would.