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Old age confers anonymity, which makes it the most effective disguise of all.
Over the sixteen years since my retirement, I’ve slowly let down my guard. Now I’m so accustomed to being a small-town chicken farmer that I’ve started to believe that’s all I am. The way Ben’s just a retired salesman for hotel supplies, and Declan’s just a retired history professor. We know the truth, but we keep each other’s secrets, because we each have our own to guard.
There’s safety in mutual blackmail.
When you live your whole life in one town, you know all the places where tragedy has occurred, because bad memories are as permanent as gravestones.
It had everything he required: a bookstore, a decent town library, a coffee shop that served espresso, and no nearby nuclear targets.
I doubt the police will ask what we are all retired from, because when you are over the hill, what you did in your previous life is of little interest to most people.
It’s the possibility of a better outcome that screws with your mind, that breeds hope, which ultimately leads to disappointment.
Pain is a powerful spice, the other face of pleasure. Some of us crave it, just enough of it, to remind us we’re alive.
The truth is far more complicated, but when you live in a world of mirrors, the truth is always distorted. Too
often, it’s what we choose to see while ignoring all the inconvenient bits, the nagging details that distort our view. We crave clarity, and so we lie to ourselves. And what I’ve told myself these last sixteen years is that Diana Ward destroyed me, when in truth, I did it to myself.
Living hard doesn’t mean dying early; sometimes it just means those hard years end up on your face.
And that’s what we must learn to deal with: Our place in a world that sees us as used up and irrelevant. This new generation looks only to the future, with little regard for the past and what it could teach them. What we could teach them.
