Found

by Erin Kinsley

Claire reflects on how it’s been: her silent son, her absent husband, the sense of everything still as irreparably broken as it ever was. She produces her own version of Annabelle’s insincere smile. ‘I don’t mean to be rude,’ she says, ‘but why don’t you just fuck off?’

The choice is between quality of life and quantity, and I think I’d prefer quality.

He’s seen first-hand the price people pay to give them a story, and how a few words of newsprint don’t tell even the beginning of the narrative as it actually is. Misery, despair, grief, hope. Column inches touch none of those things, and they’re the only things which count.

He’s alive but that’s all he is. He’s like some kind of hungry ghost, a shell of what he was, and he’ll never have any affection for us ever again, because that’s what those men have taken. We have Evan’s body, but they’ve eaten his soul, and he’s never coming back.

diffident,

Dora. His last thought is the certainty that it’s Dora waiting at his bedside, and he’s grateful that she’s there. Her presence soothes his strong objection that his time has come too soon.