If he’d been a poet he could have told her that in some nice way, but Van had never in his life packed a thought like that into words. He might have made a start at saying it—but there was worse. In her absence from his life, in the icy vacuum where her warmth had once consoled him, there was a new and powerful emotion growing inside him. As Van floated there at ease under the big winter sky, looked after, fed, watered, loved, now he could see that feeling, now he could finally put a name to what was going on inside of him. It was rage. He could see that rage within himself as if watching it through a telescope. It was black and hard and dense, like a neutron star.