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His father’s oldest habit: taking words apart like old clocks to show the gears still ticking inside.
To let her be alone with her grief, or whatever heavier thing she’d put on top to hold it down.
If we fear something, it is all the more imperative we study it thoroughly.
How comforting, to know that he could go downstairs, follow the marks his father’s feet have made, all the way to wherever he’s gone.
For the first time in his life, he is unremarkable, and this feels like power.
How to explain this to someone who has never seen it? How to explain fear to someone who has never been afraid?
She loved this about him, this unshakable belief that the world was a knowable place. That by studying its branches and byways, the tracks it had rutted in the dust, you could understand it.
PACT, its proponents insisted, would strengthen and unify the nation. Left unsaid was that unity required a common enemy. One box in which to collect all their anger; one straw man to wear the hats of everything they feared.
Spirare, Bird hears his father say. To breathe. Con: together. So conspiracy literally means breathing together.
Bird. Why did I tell you so many stories? Because I wanted the world to make sense to you. I wanted to make sense of the world, for you. I wanted the world to make sense.
But in the end every story I want to tell you is the same. Once upon a time, there was a boy. Once upon a time there was a mother. Once upon a time, there was a boy, and his mother loved him very much.
When does she stop speaking? When are you ever done with the story of someone you love?
Who ever thinks, recalling the face of the one they loved who is gone: yes, I looked at you enough, I loved you enough, we had enough time, any of this was enough?
