Still, a great deal of light falls on everything

We had pieces of the puzzle, but however we put them together, gaps remained - oddly shaped emptiness, mapped by what surrounded them like countries we couldn't name. What lingered after them was not life, but the most trivial list of mundane facts: a clock ticking on the wall, a room dim at noon, the outrageousness of a human being thinking only of herself. We began the impossible process of trying to forget them. Our parents seemed better able to do this, returning to their tennis foursomes and cocktail cruises as though they'd seen this all before.

Ormund drip-feeds him that affection and, as a result, keeps him controlled. [...] He would look at me with literally misty eyes, and I could see the love and the need. This boy deprived of a parent, a loving individual, a mentor. He would look into these eyes of this vicious, manipulative man and see gratitude and love. It was so fucking charged.

There's nothing further here for a warrior. We drive bargains. Old men's work. Young men make wars, and the virtues of war are the virtues of young men. Courage and hope for the future. Then old men make the peace. And the vices of peace are the vices of old men. Mistrust and caution. It must be so.