she led us through a large glass-walled room with a marble floor and a marble fireplace on one end . it just means that people put up with a lot from their family that they would n't put up with otherwise . about a year after i was born , my birth father died in a car accident . i have to be out of the house in a fortnight . but if no suspect was found within forty-eight hours , the police would soon enough find more important things to investigate , as he knew from experience . 