She looked up from her monitor to glance at his. "Perfectly normal, for me." Her smile was bitter, and she turned away again. "I can imagine that your aggressor was your father? Rather than your mother?"

She trailed a hand over the instruments as she walked back to the central chamber. There she stared down at Castellanos. Another mother. A far better one than her own. Ruvik read the reports. The detective had to be held back to keep her from running into the building where her daughter had burned alive. That was what a real mother would do.

"My mother was a heartless, frozen shrew. Even my father cowered from her."