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It was more that he seemed like he could frighten off whatever troubles afflicted his patients. Hundreds of years ago, he would have been precisely the sort of priest one would want to perform an exorcism.
Sometimes it was a kindness to let unpleasant things rest, but sometimes silence transformed an ordinary event into something darker, something taboo.
loved above all how in these moments, when the two of them were cocooned in pleasure and fondness, the rest of the world receded into soft focus irrelevance.
They had spent enough nights together, enough mornings together, that it was no longer practical to count them (it was thirty-two).
“I think that when someone isn’t around anymore, it’s hard to stop regret from creeping into memory. At least it is for me. There’s always the feeling that I could have done better.”
It was a portrait of a man who was dying to look at the woman he loved, and was only holding off out of fondness for her. The portrait was one of love caught in the act. Love was there in every stroke of charcoal over paper, in the roughly drawn jaw and the slope of his nose.
But then he’d remember James’s house—their house? James thought so, but he was not a reliable source of information on this topic—and its quaint window seat and pointless little gable. And he’d have to concede that his definition of what a home ought to look like was out of alignment with all his aesthetic principles. Blackthorn, in any event, could be dismissed as a failure both aesthetically and also according to whatever muddled feelings Leo was inclined to apply to James-related things.
Leo, on the other hand, would happily carry all James’s grudges for him.
Leo took the photograph, gave it another glance, and carefully placed it in his jacket pocket. “I like tangible evidence that I didn’t conjure you up,” he said. “Now let’s go home.”
“The trouble is that I love you,” he said. “And it’s ruined me for gainful employment.”
“I may have called in a few favors.” He was going to have to send a lavish flower arrangement to Mrs. Patel. Or possibly a set of throwing knives.
throw crusts to the birds that circled overhead. He wanted a span of empty time filled with nothing but James and bright yellow sunshine.
