Don't Let Go

by Harlan Coben

But if you handle it right, money buys you freedom and time, and those are a lot more tangible than happiness.

the ghosts from that night linger in you. Maybe the truth will set them free.”

They take in the full experience of great loves and great tragedies without backing down or crouching into some sort of defensive stance. If life is going to punch them in the face, they stick their chins out and savor the moment. That is living life to the fullest.

You keep going even if what you’re doing seems like a momentous waste of time and energy.

There was, in fact, nothing we did not share. I told you everything. Everything. There is nothing I kept from you. There is nothing I was embarrassed or ashamed to tell you because I knew you’d still love me. For everyone else, there is a bit of a facade. There has to be. But with you and me, there was none.

You reach an edge and then you step off and you just keep tumbling down.

Then I, as an investigator, act blasé. The truthful person lets it go. But the liar starts embellishing, trying to up the story so I share their outrage. I use the word “embellishing” here, but really it’s straight-up lying. They can’t help themselves.

Parents always tell their kids to look out the windows and be grateful for what they’ve got. But our dad handled it differently. He just said one line that has always stuck with me: “Every person has hopes and dreams.”

Libraries for me have always had a cathedral-like ambiance, a hushed sanctuary where learning is revered, where we the people elevate books and education to the level of the religious.

I’ve learned a few things in my life. One was not to react too quickly. I’m not the smartest woman. Sometimes if you have a choice of taking Road A or Road B you should just stay where you are until you know the lay of the land.

The first step is complete and immediate comprehension. You hear the news and immediately you realize how absolutely devastating it is, how there will be no reprieve, how death is final, how your world is shattered and that you will never, ever be the same. You realize all that in seconds, no more. The realization floods into your veins and overwhelms you. Your heart breaks. Your knees buckle. Every part of you wants to give way and collapse and surrender. You want to curl up into a ball. You want to plummet down that mine shaft and never stop.

Denial saves you. Denial throws up a protective fence. Denial grabs hold of you before you leap off that ledge. Your hand rests on a hot stove. Denial pulls your hand back.

There are various theories about why the years seem to pass faster as you get older. The most popular is also the most obvious. As you get older, each year is a smaller percentage of your life. If you are ten years old, a year is ten percent. If you are fifty years old, a year is two percent. But she had read a theory that spurned that explanation. The theory states that time passes faster when we are in a set routine, when we aren’t learning anything new, when we stay stuck in a life pattern. The key to making time slow down is to have new experiences. You may joke that the week you went on vacation flew by far too quickly, but if you stop and think about it, that week actually seemed to last much longer than one involving the drudgery of your day job. You are complaining about it going away so fast because you loved it, not because it felt as though time was passing faster. If you want to slow down time, this theory holds: If you want to make the days last, do something different. Travel to exotic locales. Take a class.

We pay attention to what works with our narrative. We tend to dismiss that which does not.