I don’t think it is. I think it’s just part of the way Wonderland works: people show up at random, and they leave the same way. [And while the truth won’t offer any sort of comfort, maybe with it Wirt can find a way to work through that sense of responsibility that none of them can live up to. Of course he won’t be able to latch onto it immediately, nor does Cami expect him to. But hearing it plants the seed, and in time the idea just might manage to take root.

Helped, no doubt, by the fact that Wirt is clever. She favors him with a sad smile, for a moment tempted to brush off his question and focus on his pain instead. But would that really be the better route? The one thing that had settled into her when Sean died, that bone-deep feeling she couldn’t shake, had been her own loneliness. Nothing can take the place of a brother gone, but maybe having a friend who has walked that path might offer more than a therapist offering comfort.]

I had a brother, back home; we were twins. [She glances down, forcing a steadiness into her voice she doesn’t truly feel, but needs to maintain all the same.] When I lost him, I started thinking a lot of the same things you are. That I should have been there, that I should have seen something—that I could have stopped it somehow. It took me a long time to understand that it was just beyond me to be able to save him.

[It had taken the same thing happening to her uncle, in fact, and Cami’s utter failure to be able to stop it.]