Snippet #2815967

"Few outside our kind of work ever could understand it," said the old woman after a moment of pause. She remembered how she'd been abandoned abroad, far from home, after years of imprisonment, denied any request to return. Isolated even from others in the agency. Maybe he'd hoped she would have died. "But if you cling to it, this resentment of their ignorance, this desperate desire to be absolved if not quite forgiven, then you'll never move forward - you'll only grow bitter, and bitterness never ages well." Drulović's gaze was steady even if her hands and knees were not. "You remember what happened. You know who you've become. In the end, that's all that matters - if indeed any of it does." Her chin came up ever so slightly, something flickering momentarily in her eyes. "Besides, there are some who'd say I ought not to have survived - that my death now is long overdue, that justice must call for an account, that even my presence here is but a pitiable, contemptible consolation, the smallest measure of the full price I owe, the judgment come due. Who are we to say that the survivors are yet wrong? We do what we must, yes. And in the end, we all pay what is due."

The old woman nodded toward one of the paper cups half-filled with tea, now room temperature and thoroughly unappetizing. "Dr. Krstevska, if you wouldn't mind too much, I think I'd like something to drink."

Andrijana started, as if surprised that she'd been addressed. She'd been staring at Kendra's image on screen, her face taut, her gaze hard. But she glanced now at Drulović, then reached for one of the cups, placing it in front of the old woman so she could bring it, slowly, cautiously, to her lips. The old woman had been thin when she'd arrived, thinner than most of her earlier images in the press - even more striking in person than in the photos from the trial. She'd never complained. But she hadn't seemed to recover much from whatever had happened to her that past year. That year had not been kind.