I Will Find You

by Harlan Coben

If you think this will be a tale about a wronged man proving his innocence, it is not. Because that would not be much of a story. In the end, it would make no difference. Being released from this hellhole of a cell would not lead to redemption. My son would still be dead. Redemption isn’t possible in this case.

We cry harder when a beloved pet dies than when a tsunami kills hundreds of thousands of humans.

The commercials—buy gold, get a second mortgage, consolidate your debt, invest in crypto—all seemed like legal versions of Ponzi schemes to her. The American economy relies more on the con than we like to think.

You don’t move past something like that—you learn to live with it. No matter how much pain you are in. You don’t fight that pain. You don’t push it away. You embrace it and let it become a part of you. It’s the only way.

Grief rarely attacks from the front. It prefers to sneak up on you when you least expect it.

philanthropy amongst the well-to-do had always been about social climbing, with perhaps a smidgeon of guilt thrown into the mix. It was an excuse to socialize and throw a party, because to be this obscenely wealthy and simply have a party would be too gauche, too tasteless, too showy—ergo you attached a charity as cover,

None would ever miss the money. Not only doesn’t anyone “give until it hurts”—they don’t even give until they feel it in the slightest. Gertrude understood that no one voluntarily shrinks or lessens their lot. Oh, sure, we may all claim to want better for those less fortunate than ourselves—we may even mean it—but we all want that without any kind of sacrifice on our part.

men, Gertrude believed, tended to have some sociopathic qualities coupled with a wonderful ability to self-justify any behavior.

the irony of taking people serving time often for violent crimes and putting them in an environment where the only self-improvement is making them physically stronger,

if we didn’t eat chickens, they’d go extinct, ergo it would be bad for chickens to stop eating them. A vegan friend of hers had told Gertrude that this was nonsense, but that wasn’t the point. Certainly, millions of chickens get to be born and live, however briefly and brutally, because they will eventually be eaten. Is that life better than none at all? Is it better for the chicken to have a life of, say, six weeks than never exist? Who are you to decide that for the chicken? Is it better to stop eating chicken altogether and let the chickens go extinct? Are we actually doing a good thing by eating chicken? On and on, like that. The point isn’t that one side is right or wrong. The point is, if you want to eat chicken, you’ll use this argument, even if you don’t care in the slightest about chickens or their survival as a species. Because, well, you want to eat chicken.

Those who deny it are either delusional or lying. We pay lip service to a vague greater good, but only when it serves our interest. We don’t really care about others, except when convenient. Don’t believe it? Ask yourself this: How many lives would you trade to save your child or grandchild from being killed? One person? Five? Ten? A million? Be honest with that answer and perhaps you’ll understand what Gertrude did that day. She chose Hayden. She chose her family.