Testimony

And so a person can never promise to love someone forever because you never know what might come up, what terrible thing the person you love might do.

A single action can cause a life to veer off in a direction it was never meant to go. Falling in love can do that, you think. And so can a wild party. You marvel at the way each has the power to forever alter an individual's compass. And it is the knowing that such a thing can so easily happen, as you did not know before, not really, that has fundamentally changed you and your son.

I guess that's the point of drinking, to take all the feelings and thoughts and morals away until you are just a body doing what a body will do.

If one has a good reputation and trusted, the rules can be bent to accommodate.

His arrival detonated two sheepdogs that began barking even before they emerged at a dead run from behind the garage.

I discover that it is possible to be angry with someone who has died. It is possible to hate yourself for being angry with someone who has died. It is possible to believe that you will die from grief, that somehow your breathing will catch itself up and simply stop. It is possible to believe that you could have stopped the terrible thing that happened at any time, if only you had known.

The lying started in the eighth grade. Possibly it had begun earlier, and I simply hadn’t noticed.

If you suspect a problem, there is a problem. Don’t let them get away with even the very first lie. Be vigilant.