'No,' I said. 'I knew she wasn't the one.'
'How did you know that?'
'I just knew.'
Susan smiled.
'You seem not to have changed a lot since you were fourteen,' Susan said.
'I'm bigger,' I said.
'True.'
I opened my coat.
'I have a gun,' I said.
'Yes.'
'And I'm with the one.'
'Me too,' she said.
'So, see, I have too changed,' I said.
'If you were in the same situation today,' Susan said, 'would you go to the riverbank and call the cops?'
I looked at her. She looked at me.
'Well, now I could kick Luke Haden's butt,' I said.
'You know as well as I do that you would not go ashore and ask for help,' Susan said.
I shrugged.
'It has to be you,' Susan said.
I shrugged again.
'Do you know why?' she said.
'Ego?' I said.
'Oh, probably some of that, but self-sufficiency comes to mind.'
'Isn't that sort of like independence?' I said.
Susan smiled.
'I would guess,' she said, 'that independence was the result of self-sufficiency.'
'Wow,' I said. 'You must have a PhD from Harvard, way you talk.'
'Aw, it's nothing,' Susan said.
'You think I was born that way?' I said. 'Or did I learn it from my family?'
'Nature or nurture?' Susan said.
'Uh-huh.'
'I don't know,' Susan said.
'You don't know?' I said.
