The Unknown Beloved

by Amy Harmon

“It doesn’t make sense to you. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t make sense,”

Grief did not leave. It just became part of the patina.

“You were kind. It doesn’t take much to make a child love.”

The jump from ten to twenty-five was a lifetime. The leap from twenty-five to forty was but a long weekend. It was like being trapped in a Jules Verne novel.

To call her strange was true. But it wasn’t the whole truth. Words like “strange” reduced men and women to their oddities. To flat, unfeeling objects to be studied and dismissed. People deserved more than that.

“I didn’t mean to say anything. I know better. My brain is tired. Sometimes when my brain is tired, my words come loose.”

The old woman was a bit of a troublemaker. She forgot nothing, she forgave nothing, and she missed nothing.

“Your belief is not required for something to be true,”

“I probably won’t be here that long,” he said. A shadow flickered across Dani’s face, as if that bothered her. He liked that it did. And that bothered him.

“And I was angry first,” she added, “so you are going to have to wait your turn, or even better, try some introspection and ask yourself why you have any cause to be angry at me for caring about you.”

You’ll just think you’re in love with me because you have no one and nothing to compare it to.” She seemed to consider that, her eyes searching his, her lips parted, and he almost returned to them. “Must we try everything to know something is wonderful?” she asked softly. “I don’t think so.”

“Saying that something doesn’t make sense is lazy talk,” he continued. “It’s the speech of the defeated.

My job is to find the sense in it. To make sense of the incomprehensible.”

Assumptions are bad information. Bad information is worse than no information. Bad information makes you blind to the truth when it comes along.”

“Sometimes feelings are the worst information. Because we are attached to them.

“The truth is, the harder we are, the easier we shatter. It takes some softness to absorb life’s blows.”

People did that on purpose. You didn’t consistently get someone’s name wrong unless you were trying to insult them.

In many ways, she was the most remarkably untangled human being he’d ever encountered. Complex but not complicated. Deep but not dark. It was as if she stood with her arms wide open and said, Here I am, and the world nodded and said, Yes, you are, and gave her a wide berth, not out of fear, but out of reverence. To not believe in her would be like not believing in the sun. The sun simply was—it shined, it set, it rose, it waned—and it had no need to please or persuade.

“The very best things are old,” she said. “And we let nothing grow old here.” “Old things take extra care. Sometimes . . . it’s better to start fresh.” She frowned up at him. “What?” he said, smirking at her stormy expression. “Of course things of value take extra care. That’s what gives them their value . . . we care about them. Starting fresh sounds like an excuse to not care.”

“That wasn’t a meal. It was a hog and jog. An eat and run. A chow and plow.”

“I have never been known, Eliot.” Ness frowned at him. “I don’t understand, Malone.” “Is it just a human trait, do you think, to think no one knows us? Really knows us, deep down. And almost being afraid that if they did, they would back away?”

When every choice was rotten, you had to make a rotten choice.

Some days were easier than others, and she floated. Other days she felt like she was riding an anchor to the ocean floor.

weary of useless gestures. Problems didn’t get solved, they just got covered up, repackaged, or shoved to the side.

Ugggh this sounds like my current work situation

You mark my words. You can’t appease tyrants. You have to defeat them.”

the kind of burdens you build a life around aren’t the ones you can set down. You carry them always. And in turn . . . they carry you.”

“It is the things we most want to put down, the things that are hardest to carry, to endure, that give our lives the most meaning. Sometimes our burdens are taken from us. And sometimes we walk away from them. Sometimes, not having that burden might even feel good. We might feel relief. But it doesn’t take long to realize that the things we call burdens are most often ballast. Our burdens give weight to everything we do. They shed light on all that we are. And the moment we lose them . . . we lose everything.”