Bill sits at the table, getting tired. Not in his body, but in his soul. She's woken something up. The past is dead to him, he thinks. Finally. Lorena marched him up to that porch and showed him his children and explained the veil to him: His family was dead. He was dead to them. It drove him mad. And eventually he got sane, and knit himself to together, and tried to touch the world. He tried to find respite there, and when he couldn't find that he climbed into his hidey-hole, and found love in the unlikeliest place. With a girl who knew his secret places and reached out and touched them before she'd ever tasted him.

This ring, here, on this finger: The retarded girl at the bar, the one everybody has to help, with a ring on her finger. She could be that woman. Clean. It feels right, on her finger. She can leave that past behind, and bring him into her family, and he shall want for nothing, and they will build a world. His loneliness and hers, like speakers canceling. Blessed silence.

The chain that loops around his neck is silver, gripped in velvet gloves. He struggles, glasses and plates flying, sounding out their shivaree.

There's nothing to be ashamed of, or afraid of. It does feel right. It's okay. It's okay to want things; it's okay to be happy. The past can lie back and look to the future, and she'll be there, running toward it with him. She can be that woman. She can trust that woman: Brave as Godric, ecstatic as Maryann. Sookie cascades out into the room, floating on air, voltage thrumming in her heart, eyes shining, calling his name. She comes to him like a bride, arms thrown wide. But he's gone.

The past never dies. You should know that by now.