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Page 349
tightened their grip. "My life. My children's lives. Your life, for I am your ancestor."
She stopped walking and swung around to face him. She thought she got a whiff of cigar smoke. "I gathered you thought we were related; you called me your daughter." She couldn't keep the disgust from her voice. "But how?"
"In this time, young Billy is my only heir. But he will marry and have children. They will have children, and so forth. Many generations from now, you will be the result." He maneuvered around her and began to walk again on the path along the river. The mud seemed to be drying up wherever they walked, though the mist still swirled beside them on the flowing water, and Mariah could feel its warm humidity.
"I see." But she didn't, not really. "Then Billy is my great, great-something grandfather."
He nodded. "And I'm two greats beyond that." He smiled up at her, revealing his ugly yellow teeth. "And you, my dear, have managed to make all our lives wonderful!"
"Just how did I do that?"
They'd reached an area where the embankment rose abruptly before them, and the old man chose a path to their right. It led upward to the town.
Mariah saw no one there. No one anywhere around. But mist still swirled about them.
Pierceshe believed she'd always think of this man by that namecontinued as they walked, "Though you couldn't stop me from making the mistake I did those several years back, you prevented it from turning into the utter disaster it was before your intervention. And you kept my descendants from having to pay forevermore."
She tried to keep the impatience from her voice. "Okay, Grandpa." She drew out the title ironically. "How about being a bit more specific?"
"All right," he said. "You know by now how I stole Billy from his mother when he was eleven years old."
She nodded. "Your son died and you didn't like his wife."
Pierce shook his head slowly, as though at his own folly,

 
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