“Did you put him somewhere?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“Same kind of a place I’m going to put you––” He hesitated a moment and ended, “A mad house!”
“Did you let him come home to me?”
“Not I. Damn the careless keepers! He skipped out one day, and I didn’t know until he’d a good start of me. I followed as soon as possible, but you were gone. Now—now—then, to find such a place for you!”
Jinnie’s imagination called up the loathsome thing he mentioned and terrified her to numbness. At that moment she understood what her father had written in that sealed letter to Lafe Grandoken.
But she couldn’t allow her mind to dwell upon his threat against herself.
“What’d you mean when you said I could save my friends?”