"No slight taken, lover," Venus says quietly, holding Derek's hand between hers. "That's the hardest bit, isn't it? That if we are suffering so much, it would seem that we should be saved.

"But what I tell myself," she confides, "is that as dark as it has seemed, there are those who are suffering so very much more. Hopefully, if there is a God, he is helping those pour souls. And if he's not? I don't know. Maybe it's true, that old adage, if it doesn't kill us, it makes us stronger."

She doesn't know, not really. But she ponders it at times.