Since We Fell

by Dennis Lehane

Some winters, snow encased the valley in silence so dense it became its own sound.

When Elizabeth Childs left a room, you felt it, even if you’d arrived after she’d gone. When Elizabeth Childs left the world, it felt the same way.

honey-blond partner-in-bitch

It had been naïve to think that here, in the trendiest of all Boston neighborhoods, the shot-’n’-a-beer crowd could have held the line against the single-malt cohort.

naïf,

Unlike Sebastian, as well as some of her friends, Brian never presumed that the panic attacks were within Rachel’s control. She didn’t have them because she was weak or self-indulgent or prone to drama; she had them because they afflicted her, like any malady of the body—the flu, a cold, meningitis.

He knew her. And—wonder of wonders—he was still here.

something that, at the moment, spoke in cadence more than structure.

structures that gave the impression of aggressive indifference to both history and its sob sister, nostalgia.

Grendel’s Den was a basement-level place and they ordered their first round as shoes of every variety ran past on the cobblestones outside.

ur-humans

Every step she took out of her comfort zone was either one step closer to better mental health or one step closer to another breakdown. But another breakdown now, after so much progress, would feel ten times as debilitating.

the May air filled with the scents of decay and rebirth in equal measure.

but Melissa was the type of friend who expected her to “buck up” and “think positive” and—Excuse me, waiter, could I have one more of these with less ice this time?—“shake it off.”

travertine