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Ronan’s phone buzzed. He swept it up at once, which meant it could be only one person: Adam Parrish. For a few minutes, he listened to it very hard, and then, in a very quiet, very small, very un-Ronan voice, he said, “Alter idem” and hung up.
But Adam Parrish was also cautious, calculating, ambitious, intensely focused on the long game, so therefore a good influence. And one only had to spend a minute with the two of
them to see that he was deeply invested in Ronan. So theoretically Adam was more positive than negative in the safety department.
as if Aurora had had no part in the transaction at all.
she’d find herself heading toward the Potomac, or just due west. Once she’d come back to herself and found she’d driven two hours to the Blue Ridge Mountains.
He’d always seemed annoyed that Ronan looked so much like their father.
“Beautiful lady, Bryde says if you want to kill someone and keep it a secret, don’t do it where the trees can see you.”
Declan remembered that, because for years he’d considered Wednesdays days of bad news.
“The will is in the cedar box in our bedroom closet,” she said into his hair. Declan closed his eyes. He whispered, “I hate him.” “My dauntless Declan,” Aurora said, and then she slid softly to the floor. The orphans Lynch.
“This is what you came for? I didn’t think you were sentimental about Dad’s stuff.” Declan wasn’t, but he wanted this painting. He needed it.
But what was Declan Lynch but a liar?
sum of money that would keep them in middle-class comfort for most of their lives as long as they didn’t make many splashy spends like car purchases, hospital stays, or deals for supernatural paintings. “Play it cool.”
Ronan couldn’t lie even with his body language. Somehow, objectively troubling truths about their parents had been unable to mar Ronan’s feelings for them. Declan envied him. His love and his grief both.
All behaving so well in concert that they were utterly forgettable.
“You remind me of my brother.”
He didn’t seem to have that edge one required to survive. He seemed more likely to sell annuities or bonds.
But it was also possible there was a side of his mother he hadn’t known.
Richard Campbell Gansey III was the most academic and mythic person he knew, and the most likely of any of Ronan’s acquaintances to have an idea of what the significance of the image might be.
My BABY
He wanted to send it to Adam, but he didn’t want Adam to think he had to devote time to it. He’d already fucked up Adam’s life enough at the moment. He didn’t think Adam was angry with him, but things had been different since the dorm was destroyed. Quieter, sort of. Ronan didn’t know how to make things right again, and he was afraid of making things more wrong. So he just texted him: dreamt of you.
Oh ronan
Aurora had been tender, trusting. There was none of that in this portrait.
Mór Ó Corra.
Hmmm????
He’d nearly forgotten his father’s Northern Irish accent. What a ridiculous thing to forget.
guessing Ronan’s next action correctly, guessing his motivation incorrectly.
“It’s like you checked out of the family at birth.”
Was there anywhere for him to be?
It was as though the less Declan got riled up, the less he seemed to care, the more Ronan wanted to make him break.
Declan’s eyes tightened, as if he were disappointed in Ronan. Like it was his fault.
he could dream something small. He could be in control. Declan would never know. He could keep going.
“I just want to know,” Adam said finally, in a slightly different voice from before, “that when I come for break, you’ll be there.”
Oh my god
strange to think that Ronan wore them now without having remembered this detail. This
He was a good storyteller. It was obvious he liked the sound and play of words released into the air.
When he said she was a mess, he just meant the vodka and ecstasy.
Hennessy would rather bleed out than date a boring white man in last year’s suit.
Honestly same
He knew what he was allowed to do and to want and to put in his life.
He just didn’t think. For one second of one minute of the day, he didn’t run the probabilities and worst-case scenarios and possibilities and consequences. For one second of one minute of the day, he just let himself feel. There it was: Happiness.
Declan baby
You can’t unsee this, he told himself. This is not allowed in the life you are living, he told himself. I want so much more, he told himself.
There was nothing there. There was nothing there. There was nothing there. All of this and there was nothing there.
“Is it as bad leaving as it is coming? Because if so I’m staying here forever.”
The idea of Adam Parrish on a motorcycle was more than enough birthday present for Ronan; he was senselessly turned on.
Oh my god same
Normally this was his job, to be impulsive, to be wasteful of time, to visibly need.
Adam peered around the kitchen. He always looked at home in it; it was all the same colors as him, washed out and faded and comfortable. “I’m starving. I need to eat. I need to take off your clothes. But first, I want to look at Bryde.”
I love how Maggie gives us so little. It’s absolutely perfect and I love her for it.
He was something like a psychic, if there was such a thing as a psychic whose powers extended more toward the future of the world than the future of people.
He had put all of that away to go to Harvard.
Me closing my eyes doesn’t make the monster go away. I’d rather know. And I don’t trust anybody else to spot me. You know what I’m supposed to look like.
Adam would never judge someone else for their skepticism. His default setting was mistrust.
“I’m looking for Hennessy,” she said.
Instead it was every time Ronan had been alone. There was no gore. No shrilling with terror. There was only the quiet that came after all those things. There was only the quiet that came when you were the only one left. Only the quiet that came when you were something strange enough to outsurvive the things that killed or drove away everyone you loved.
Oh my fucking god
It was perhaps the purest expression of Ronan’s imagination.
It was perhaps his best dream.
It is cabeswater! Kind of
It was easy to forget how much he loved it.
It’s religion without a god.
