Chapter 22 He knelt by the bed, trembling, and slowly pulled his mother's lace panties down to her ankles.

His hand was still holding the inside of her thigh.

Five fingers sank into that soft, warm flesh, the fingertips feeling the elasticity of the fatty tissue beneath the skin and the pulsation of tiny blood vessels.

He didn’t want to let go.

Once his fingers touched that skin, he didn’t want to leave it, like a person who had walked for five days in the desert and finally found water; if you asked him to put down his water bottle, he couldn’t.

But he knew he had to let go.

It wasn’t because reason had returned. Reason hadn’t returned.…