Rosalie pondered whether she should even attend Knapp’s funeral, so certain was she that she would make a spectacle of herself. It wasn’t vanity, so much; she was so convinced that she ought to have kept herself in far better shape, a task that seemed constantly out of her reach as she strove to accomplish more ineffable things first — even as they seemed just beyond her reach, always and without explanation. Beauty was not the issue; strength and power mattered, and those lapse with youth, as everybody knew —
It wasn’t like he was going to be a movie star, but he had hoped, at some point, to be able to work…
