Then he leaned down, pressed his lips briefly against my cheek, then walked through those double doors the way a man walks to the gallows. He turned to look back at me once, mouth quirking upward awkwardly and then falling. He looked brimming with things to say but pressed his lips tightly closed. All the weight of Belavere Trench held in the mouth of a miner’s boy. Thus, Patrick Colson was gone, and I believed I would never see him again.
