crow road

She turned to me, during that night, and said, 'Prentice?'
'Mm-hmm?
'Do you think Rory's ... away the crow road? Do you think he's dead?'
I turned on my side, stroked her flank, smoothing my had from thigh to shoulder, then back, 'I really don't know,' I admitted.
She took my hand, kissed it. 'I used to think, sometimes, that he must be dead, because otherwise he'd have been in touch. But I don't know.' There was just enough light seeping in past the curtains to let me see her head shaking. 'I don't know, because people sometimes do things you'd never thought they would ever do.' Her voice broke, and her head turned suddenly; she pushed her face into the bedclothes; I moved over to hold her, just to comfort her; but she kissed, hard, and climbed on top of me.
I had, up until that point, been performing an agonizing reappraisal of the indignant signals of total, quivering, painful exhaustion flooding in from every major muscle I possessed. My body's equivalent of the Chief of Engineering was screaming down the intercom that the system just wouldn't take any more punishment, Jim, and there was no doubt that I really should have been pulling out and powering down just then ...
But, on the other hand, what the heck.
the crow road - iain banks