Their Shadows Deep

by Peter Golden

Jack answered his friend with a smile he’d been working on since the age of three, when his parents had put him in a sanatorium to recover from scarlet fever—a smile he’d perfected during a childhood and adolescence of chronic illness and pain—that celebrated Jack Kennedy smile, so very Irish and American, wide and bright, the smile that was the wall Jack had built between himself and the world.

‘The world isn’t kind, so friends must be.’ It makes me happy to help.”

The cemetery was a testament to the stupidity of the men who started wars and the bravery of those who fought them.

“When does the grief end?” “It doesn’t. Grief changes shape.” “To what?” Caitlin asked. “Memories.”

Because in the villages, I never noticed that the solution to human misery was philosophy.”

the intellectual posturing of the well fed, the irrelevant chatter of the lucky ones.

Caitlin asked, “You’re a Phillies fan?” He grinned, deepening the beguiling lines around his eyes and mouth. “Tragically, yes. One of the masochists of Connie Mack Stadium.”