Where They Lie (Nora McTavish, #1)

by Joe Hart

We forget how young some people are when they start carrying weight beyond their years, then wonder why they struggle.

A tremor went through her expression, threatened to crack the mask and let the sorrow slip out.

humans are learning machines. We learn by what’s done to us, not just what we’re taught. We learn to injure and touch and wound what we shouldn’t. We learn to abuse and abandon if we’re hurt and lost. The past imprints on the future like a typewriter slowly running out of ink.

Tragedy was a consumable commodity, and everyone was buying.

“Your attitude lately hasn’t been optimal.” “I didn’t know ‘optimal attitude’ was a position requirement.”

There comes a time in everyone’s life where they begin wondering what the point is. If they’re making a difference or just treading water. What was the point of work if it only funded a week’s vacation in some paradise where you could only ever be a visitor, never a resident? What good was it to hate waking up on Monday morning only to yearn for Friday night? If purpose became a perk not a prerequisite, what the hell were we even doing?

the bruising a poisonous sunset across her features.

Hunger became our fourth companion in that little room. It took up residence inside us all and ate its fill.

That little silver medal with a saint of lost things imprinted on it. But Paul was the saint, and we were the lost things, and he saved us. Helped us be found.

drowsed

swale

creosoted

As far as I’m concerned she’s someone else’s problem.

dirigible

“Nice to know people will give you their time,” he mused, watching out the window. “The only thing we really have to give, and it’s special. Time’s just another word for love.”

We all want to be strong, and being strong is being right.

Obsession is caustic. It strips all reason away.

Bitter truth is that pill we can’t get ourselves to swallow. It’s the medicine we get force-fed by the ones who love us. And even when we know it’s good for us, we spit it out the moment they’re not looking.

The drive home was a blur of resentment. Doubt rode shotgun.

How many brilliant people had fallen under the weight of unattainable desires? When you didn’t have opportunity, hope could become chains.

Occam’s razor

Sleep’s a funny thing. It’s amorphous as steam, seeming to come and go at a whim of its own. It favors some and shuns others. It comes in technicolor dreams and deathlike comas. Sleep is fickle and undeniable.

Just like the night strips away reason and common sense, leaving us with unmitigated fears of what could be lurking beyond the firelight, the day fills us with an overconfidence bordering on stupidity.

chirring

The fear of the night before began sloughing away like stubborn grime.

There is a freedom in anonymity. Liberty in losing yourself in a place that’s yet to be exploited. It purifies, even if we don’t deserve it.

The trick is finding a place so quiet, so full of solitude, you don’t have to think over the din—the noise other minds create. Your own creates enough by itself. Everyone should have a place to retreat to, somewhere unique that doesn’t belong to anyone, not even you.

When there are no distractions, you can get down to business. Let the terrible things out of their cages you keep inside. Face them as fully as you can, let them hurt you. Bones are the strongest at a break site while they’re mending. Scar tissue is fibrous so it’s tougher than skin.

We’re told a life without pain is ideal. To avoid suffering as much as possible. But pain is where you grow. We cry with our first breaths because it hurts to expel amniotic fluid a...

I cried for the things that were gone and for what would come. I let it in. I let it break me.

They’ve been violated in some way, and people watch from their living rooms shaking their heads, glad they don’t understand.

The entire place looked like it had been hit by a personalized earthquake. One made just for me. This violation of my private space. And it shook me to see the things that made up my life scattered without care.

My desk had been autopsied, its contents strewn in a swath of office carnage.

A part of me tried to wall off the things spilling through the barrier I’d constructed.

a single cog in a much greater machine. A machine designed to run on the smallest budget while asking the most of its components.

So many people’s interests stopped at a time clock or paycheck.

We gave them life, and it’s their responsibility to do something with it.

“But I don’t understand.” “Sometimes good things don’t need to be understood.”

listened to the trees talk.

“It comes down to help,” I said. “A lot of people like to pretend they never needed help, never got it, but that’s bullshit. Almost no one gets anywhere without help. And it’s the first thing people forget once they get where they’re going.”

You want someone to blame, even if it’s yourself.”

I knew this from experience that seemed so old it felt as if I’d gained it in another lifetime.

It isn’t fair we lose the ones we love twice.

parhelion

if you’re lucky—you escape it. But you’re never really free.

I avoided it like I avoided writing my last name when I could get away with it. Seeing it created by my own hand felt like an offense.

Sometimes trauma is a knife, sometimes it’s stitches.

I didn’t have much of anything except time to wonder why I was alone.

Tragedy should mean something, but mostly it doesn’t. Some people were broken, and they broke others. The ones left behind picked up the pieces and carried on. If they could. There was heartache and damage, but we carried on.

I trusted that fear. I wasn’t going to wave away her concerns like so many others did and put faith in the system. There were protections and well-meaning people behind them, but it wasn’t enough. The system never seemed to be liable. Never accountable. Just filled with platitudes and protocols that did nothing when the chips were down. It was nowhere to be seen in the aftermath.