Now You’re Mine Alone

Jacob’s first honest sentence in three years — and it is still spoken in the language of ownership. Not “I’m sorry,” not “I was afraid for you,” but “now you’re mine alone.” He “had decided everything for himself — and had no intention of asking permission.” For someone taught since childhood that closeness means belonging (see “To Break or to Hide”), there is simply no other vocabulary: tenderness and capture are one word to him.

Listen to “my baby”: the pet name here is not affection but a seal. It is what you call something that cannot leave. This does not make Jacob’s feeling false — it is real and, perhaps for the first time, without an audience. But it matters to see what he is offering: not a relationship, but Simon’s transfer from one form of property into another, warmer one. Two chapters from now it will turn out that the word “mine” has two ends — and the second will close around his own throat.