“Is that what all this is about?” He was using his policeman’s voice again. I recognized it from our last discussion about you. He’d repressed the lilt, the hint of a laugh that was usually behind all his utterances. He has this talent, doesn’t he, Patrick? The gift of being able to remove oneself utterly from one’s words. The gift of being physically in a place, talking, responding, while not actually—not emotionally—being there at all. At the time I thought it was part of a policeman’s training, and for a while I told myself that Tom needed to do this, that he couldn’t help it. Removing
...more
