Could she have been that for Hamlet? He often told her so. When he was in the earliest of his wild moods, before this last one -- when he was merely a fitful, fidgeting boy who couldn't meet others' eyes for long, and liked to talk to her because she didn't mind it. Before anyone could call what he had love-madness, and she wasn't its only cure.

It's pointless, to imagine herself back to the beginning and wonder what she could have done differently. As pointless as wondering what would happen if her mother was more than a grave and a vague, angelic image. Perhaps it's because she's her father's daughter, as prone to getting lost in abstractions.

But ... her brother seems to have found himself here. She nods again, silent, eyes on the house he built with his own hands.