The Long and Faraway Gone

by Lou Berney

What Bingham despised most about O’Malley, he decided—and he’d given the subject a lot of thought—was how smug O’Malley always was. Like O’Malley had already beaten the game. Like no turn of the cards could possibly surprise him. Bingham, at age eighteen, had been the same way. It kind of boggled his mind now—all the surprises that life had up its sleeve.

Howard liked to tell the people he sponsored about the dark before the dawn. How life is about progress, not perfection.

“Sometimes partial honesty is the best policy.”

He liked to think that sometimes an ending cleared the way for a beginning.