When the Stars Go Dark

by Paula McLain

No one had ever tried to look so deeply into the criminal psyche before, let alone compile and catalog data so that law enforcement officers like myself could more accurately profile and identify suspects, and more readily solve cases.

“When you read a book like this, the violence starts to feel like a movie. The crimes feel like sick plots, not real life, and all the details are so lurid and specific. But it is real. And the victims, who just come through as names with thumbnail photos, just targets, we don’t know them at all. We never get the whole picture, how they got drawn into the story in the first place, how certain sets of experiences made them vulnerable, and not just in a general way either but to the particular predators who targeted them. That book would be fascinating, wouldn’t it? That’s the stuff I want to know.”

He looked at me for a long time. “Well, maybe you’ll have to write it one day.” “Right. That’s going to happen.”

was that I wasn’t just involved in my cases, I lived and breathed them. If my level of dedication made me a good detective with a high solve rate, it was also ruining my personal life.

But even when the edge was gone, I couldn’t quite land in my body.

The media likes to sensationalize psychopaths and evil geniuses like Charles Manson and David Berkowitz, but in real life, people who commit serial murders are typically of average intelligence, and rarely show an obvious degree of mental illness, at least not on the surface. In this case, there’s even more reason to believe our suspect blends easily into his environment.

“You know, we don’t always understand what we’re living inside of, or how it will matter. We can guess

all we want and prepare, too, but we never know how it’s going to turn out.”

Getting your heart broken is the privilege of being human, Eden used to say. I didn’t know what she meant then. My heart had been broken lots of times, and I was supposed to say thank you? Now, all these years later, I’m at least starting to see that she was really talking about the whole journey. That it’s impossible to be alive and not get hurt sometimes, not if you’re doing it right.

“I was thinking about forgiveness today. You know, so many people get confused about what it is, binding it up with guilt. Feeling ashamed about things they never had any control over in the first place. I don’t believe forgiveness is something we have to

kill ourselves trying to earn. It’s already here, all around us, like rain. We just have to let it in.”

“Maybe not. But I do think that the bigger and more impossible something is, the more it needs to move through us so we can keep living.”

I can’t see him through the smoke but recognize the solid, spreading warmth of his skin and his smell, which has always been exactly like this, the scent of trees becoming wise.

Shannan isn’t me, or Jenny. She’s not Cameron either, but I can also see how we all line up behind one another, making a version of the same shape in the world. Trying to believe in people or in promises. Trying to be enough. Trying—always trying—to be free somehow. To unfold.

“The people we love never leave us, Anna. You know that already. That’s what I mean by spirit. I mean love.”

For the longest time I stand on Lansing Street, thinking about beauty and terror. Evil. Grace. Suffering. Joy. How they’re all here every day, everywhere. Teaching us how to keep stepping forward into our lives, our purpose.