The Little Friend

by Donna Tartt

it became—automatically and quite irrevocably—the truth, without any of them being aware of the collective alchemy which had made it so.

hindsight, no moral to this story. Robin himself, or what they remembered of him, was all they had; and their exquisite delineation of his character—painstakingly ornamented over a number of years—was their greatest masterpiece.

Robin had been a giddy, fickle child—somber at odd moments, practically hysterical at others—and, in life, this unpredictability had been a great part of his charm.