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Her thin body stayed thin, but her belly grew and stretched beyond her wildest imaginings. She felt passive beneath it—that taut belly led, and she followed. This was the most specific her body had ever felt. She didn’t feel peaceful or beatific. Nothing as typical as that. She felt her life furthe…

Two days later, just as she began to relent, Bobby came to her with a plan. And the home and second-home addresses of all the board members from all the relevant corps: Dow Chemical, Monsanto, General Dynamics, Westinghouse, Raytheon, DuPont, Honeywell, IBM and Valence Chemical. He carefully worked…

Later, by themselves, he brought it up. “I feel outrage. I feel anger. But I am undone by sadness. When I am behind the camera, I feel a desire to understand and empathize. To undercut my own points. The truth is, that’s when it becomes interesting.”

Mary nodded, but she didn’t really listen. Sh…

“You make us pity him.”

Bobby turned off the projector and flipped the lights back on. He shrugged.

“He looks haunted, pathetic, old,” Mary said.

“He is haunted, pathetic, old.”

“But he bears responsibility for atrocities, and he won’t admit it. He doesn’t even desire our sympathy. You …

She knew she should change her life. She felt herself to be in such a diminished, subtracted state. It even occurred to her that it might be the name itself—Louise Barrot. She believed taking the name of a dead infant had colored all her possibilities, tinted everything with morbidity. She knew als…