You know, I was twenty years old when your father stopped sleeping in the bed with me. That’s hard, Macon. Very hard. By the time I was thirty . . . I think I was just afraid I’d die that way.

Hagar was energized by the details of her mission. She stalked him . . . She could not get his love (and the possibility that he did not think of her at all was intolerable), so she settled for his fear.

“You are trying to kill him.” Ruth’s voice was matter-of-fact. “If you so much as bend a hair on his head, so help me Jesus, I will tear your throat out.”