that which I thought the greatest thing
this I had never lost
for I had never possessed it
it was never mine to begin with

I suppose it's no accident that I ended up in the profession I'm in. From the beginning, my mind has been tuned to look for patterns. The finding of patterns is actually quite easy: everything has a pattern, every bit of data, every tiny stimulus can be fitted to a scheme. The big trick, the thing that they pay you big bucks for, is figuring which of these patterns actually match reality.

Betrayal? What was there to betray? Abandonment? But what claim did I have, what duty did she have?