Shutter Island

by Dennis Lehane

He couldn’t remember a day since Dolores’s death when he hadn’t thought of joining her, and it sometimes went further than that. Sometimes he felt as if continuing to live was an act of cowardice.

But to do that, he’d have to find a way to put Dolores on a shelf, to allow her to gather dust in the hope that enough dust would accumulate to soften his memory of her. Mute her image. Until one day she’d be less a person who had lived and more the dream of one.