We Were Soldiers
101. Through a Glass, Darkly
He waited behind the row of pruned privet hedges until first one car, and another soon after, left the house. The lights in the house remained on, so he made his move. Stepped out from behind the hedges and onto the gravel driveway. Absentmindedly patted the package contained within the inside pocket of his jacket. Crept towards the front door, conscious that, tomorrow, his whereabouts would be questioned. Nobody could know that he had come here.
At the front door, Bucky straightened from his stealthy crouch and rang the bell. It hadn't been difficult to find Carter's home address. Dernier wasn't the only one who could be sneaky when he wanted.
The door opened, and he squinted in the wave of light that washed over him. The voice of Michael Carter was full of surprise.
"Sergeant Barnes? If you're looking for Captain Rogers, he and Peggy left about ten minutes ago."
"Actually, I came to speak to you."
"Me? What for?"
He shifted from foot to foot, that damn light still blinding him. "Mind if I come in?"
"No, of course not. Forgive my rusty manners. Come on in."
He stepped into the house. It was a nice house. Much nicer than the one he'd grown up in. All high-ceilings and wainscot panelling… and was that a chandelier, above the staircase?
"What can I do for you, Sergeant?"
"Please, call me Bucky," he replied. No sense standing on ceremony at a time like this. "And I was actually hoping to do something for you."
He reached into his pocket and brought out the small bottle of Scotch he'd been carefully cradling since purchasing it earlier that afternoon. Lizzie would've given him a discount on the price, but he didn't want her telling Steve and the others that he was back on the Scotch again. It would only worry them. So, he'd gone somewhere else to buy it. Somewhere that charged more because it was in a swankier area of London.
"I got this for you. Kind of a welcome home gift. Though I feel obliged to tell you that this definitely isn't on the list of approved food and drinks for those medically recovering from an ordeal like yours, so you consume it at your own peril."
"It's about time there was a little peril in this place. Come into the drawing room and you can help me open it."
He followed his host through a corridor and into a very nice room with comfortable chairs within easy reach of a towering bookshelf. Doubtful A Tree Grows in Brooklyn would be found amongst the hefty tomes.
"Y'know," he said, as Michael opened a hidden drinks cabinet behind a seemingly plain wooden wall panel, "when I was a kid, I always wondered why it was called a 'drawing' room when no actual drawing went on inside it."
"When I was a child, I used to believe that my home's secret hiding places existed because the house once belonged to smugglers." He tapped the floorboards with his foot and offered a wistful smile. "I still haven't managed to find all the secret corridors they used to smuggle things in and out, and I refuse to give up believing that they exist."
Michael poured two small measures of whisky into two tumblers, and handed one over.
"To your health," Bucky offered.
The recovering Captain wrinkled his nose. "One should never toast something so poor. Here's a better one: to childhood, and all its hidden secrets."
The first sip of Scotch burned his throat, as it always had. The second went down smoother.
"Did you give Steve the talk?" he asked. It seemed like a safe starting point.
"An abridged version. More of an overview, really. See, sometime between me being taken prisoner and me being rescued, my sister became the physical embodiment of Sekhmet. That's the lion-headed ancient Egyptian goddess of war, by the way, in case you were wondering. Plus, given my current physical condition, I'm hardly in a position to make good on any threats against your medically enhanced best friend. Peggy knows how to take care of herself."
"Better than Steve does, at least," Bucky agreed. "I still have to help him with his necktie, you know."
"The burdens of friendship."
They sipped their whisky in silence for a moment.
"So," said Michael. "Thus far, I've had enquiries about my physical and emotional health from my sister, my parents, more aunts, uncles and cousins than I knew I even had, the family physician, his precocious young daughter, what friends I have left who are not overseas, several of my mother's acquaintances, three Generals from the War Office, Captain Rogers, and Patrick, the postman. Aren't you going to ask me how I'm settling back in? That seems to be a favourite."
Bucky shook his head and tapped his glass for a top-up. "I figure you've had enough of that question. When you've been through what you've been through, everybody's quick to tell you that you can talk to them. Confide in them. Tell them about what happened. What they don't tell you is, you don't have to talk about it, if you don't want to. That it's okay to keep it all to yourself."
"You sound like you speak from experience," Michael pointed out. "Captain Rogers told me that his team was captured by HYDRA. I take it you were one of those he freed?"
"That's right."
"And you don't walk to talk about your experience?"
"I'd rather not."
Michael sank down into one of the chairs. It dwarfed his emaciated frame, driving home just how long he'd suffered from deprivation. "Why not?"
The question floored him. Nobody had ever asked him that before. They just assumed that what he'd been through was hard to talk about. Which it was. But they never asked why.
"Well… because it wasn't the same for me as the other guys. While they were toiling in the factory, I developed pneumonia, and got hauled off for medical experimentation. It was basically torture."
"I see." Michael gestured to the other chair, and Bucky reluctantly sat. He'd only seconds ago asked for a top-up, and could hardly just swig the whisky and run now. "Are you ashamed of what they did to you?"
"What? No. I mean, I'm not thrilled I got captured and taken prisoner, but I was just unlucky that I fell sick."
"So, what? You're afraid that your friends will think you weak? That they'll consider you broken? That they'll question what you may have divulged to your enemies to make the torture stop?"
Jeez, was the guy a mind-reader, or just real lucky with his guesses? "All of the above, I suppose." Though all of the above was grossly over-simplifying the situation. "It's just… they wouldn't understand what I went through."
"Do you understand it?"
He shook his head. Where the hell were these questions coming from? He oughta just tell Michael that he didn't wanna talk about it, down the last of his drink, and head back to the city. The guy was clearly far too insightful for his own good.
"I dunno," he said instead. "I'm still trying to wrap my head around it. Until I understand and accept what happened to me, how can anyone else?"
"Maybe it's easier to not be understood," Michael mused. "To just accept that bad things happened because you were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Maybe it's easier to box it off forever and let people throw their questions against a brick wall. After all, if nobody understands, and nobody knows the part of your life you're trying to keep hidden, then you can keep it safe. And if you should slip, and say or do something you don't really mean… well, they just have to accept it, don't they, because it came from that unknowing place."
"I never really thought about it like that before." But he probably should have. "Maybe you're right."
"Of course I'm right. I'm always right. Just ask Peggy." With a maniacal grin, Michael poured another measure of whisky into each glass. The bottle was already half empty! Maybe he should'a brought a smaller bottle… "I, on the other hand, am going to write a book about my experiences in the HYDRA stalag."
He damn near spit his mouthful of whisky back into his glass. Instead, he tried to swallow it, and it ended up going down the wrong pipe, burning his nose. After he'd finished choking, he managed to gasp, "What happened to all that bullshit about boxing it off and never talking about it?"
"Your bullshit. Not mine. See, it would be so easy to shut everything out. To close myself off and push away those I love. Something happened to me; but it didn't happen to me alone. I lost friends. A lot of friends. I saw a lot of good men—men who'd committed no crime other than being Jewish—worked to death in that place. The world deserves, one day, to know their stories. All of them. The reason I don't talk about what happened is because each time you tell a story, it changes. A word here, a memory there. Accidental lies creep in. The audience projects its own wishes onto the story. They want it to be bigger. Darker. The ending more heroic.
"But I don't want that. I want to write the truth about the men who lived and died out there. So, I keep it all alive up here. I keep it real." He tapped his temple with his fingers. "And one day, when the book's been written and I'm ready to tell the story, my family and friends can read it along with everyone else. Because it won't be my story, it will be theirs: the men who never came home."
Michael's selflessness only deepened Bucky's shame. He was selfish, because he didn't want to tell those stories, ever. The friends he'd lost over the past year, and the friends he might yet lose in the coming battles… there was a place for them, inside his mind. In his mind, he could imagine Carrot going home and marrying Samantha, and the four carrot-topped kids they'd have. He could picture Wells living with a family who loved him unconditionally. He could hope that Hodge would be the one to put a bullet in Hitler's skull, and get that statue in his honour to make his ol' mom proud. In his mind, Gusty and Nurse Klein could live the rest of their lives in a world where war was a thing of the past.
Those were the stories he wanted to tell himself. They weren't real, but they were better than real, because they were happy, and they would live for as long as he lived. Nobody would ever get sick, in his stories. Nobody would ever die. They would live young and eternal, until he drew his last breath and took them with him into what lay beyond.
"Would you like to see what I've written so far?"
He blinked away the stories in his eyes at Michael's suggestion. He really didn't wanna read what the guy had written. Who knew what horrors it might contain? What dark feelings it might evoke? What slumbering memories might stir within? But he just didn't feel comfortable saying no.
"Yeah, sure."
Michael pulled several books from the shelf behind him, then removed a bunch of rolled-up papers that had been hidden from view. When Bucky unrolled them, he found just a single line on the first page.
"'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.' Y'know this is technically plagiarism, right?"
The man merely laughed. "All the best stories start with something stolen. A few words; some precious heirloom; a heart. Though, truth be told, I'm thinking of cutting it to merely, It was the worst of times."
"Why don't you subvert it? Something like, It was the worst of times, they were the best of men."
"Well, I like it, though I think the estate of Mr. Dickens may still take exception."
"Is this the only line you have so far?"
"I'm afraid so. You see, every time I sit down to write another line, somebody interrupts me. It's taken me this long to get the rest of the family out of the house for a few hours."
And here he'd thought all Englishmen were unfailingly polite, like Monty! "Alright, I can take a subtle hint, I'll be going."
"No need for that. Sorry if I came off rude; living in squalor with fifty other men, most of whom have only a very limited command of the English language, you quickly learn to be honest… sometimes a little brutally so. Look, it's getting late, and it sounds like the wind's picking up out there. Not very pleasant conditions for a man in your tipsy condition to be walking back to London in. We have a guest room I can make up for you, if you want to leave in the morning."
Bucky downed the last of his whisky and shook his head. "Thanks, but I'd rather not be here when Steve gets back from his date. In fact, I'd rather that he… or your sister… didn't know I was here at all. Y'know, since I've spent so much time not-talking about my experiences with Steve, he might be a little sore if he knew I was also not-talking about it with his date's brother."
"Then how about we finish this bottle of whisky, hide you in one of the secret corridors that I'm certain exists, and wait until Peggy goes to bed. Then we can sneak you out the kitchen window and you can make a stealthy escape back to the city. It will be like a covert mission, of sorts."
"I think you've already had too much of that whisky. Save the rest for the next time you get the chance to write your book. Besides, I need to be back at my room before Steve gets there, because if he comes knockin' on my door to tell me all about the foot-in-mouth moments he's gone through over the past couple of hours, and I'm not there, he'll probably assume the worst: that the moment he took his eye off me, I ran off to drink copious amounts of whisky."
"I'd hardly call it copious amounts." Michael held the two-thirds-empty bottle up and shook it so that the whisky sloshed around inside. "It's a rather small bottle. Still, I see your point. Moral support for your best friend, and all that." He looked blearily around the room. "Would you mind awfully if I didn't get up to see you out? The chair seems to have me in some sort of devilishly cunning full-body lock that I don't think I can break out of."
"Don't sweat it, I don't mind seeing myself out." Besides, he recognised that glazed look in Michael's eyes. He'd seen it in the mirror a few times. In a few moments, Michael would be fast asleep. Whisky did that to a man. It used to do it to Bucky. Now, it just made him feel a little fuzzy around the edges, and it took a lot more than a small bottle to put him out for the night.
"Thanks for the drink, and the company," Michael offered.
"No problem. Thanks for the perspective. Oh, and if anybody asks where you got that bottle from…"
Michael tapped his nose. "Secret smuggler stash."
"Right. G'night."
Outside, the wind had picked up. It tried to pull the front door from Bucky's grasp, and made him battle it to close it again. How odd it was, that Michael was so easy to talk to, whilst his sister made every conversation feel like a battle. In many ways, they were very alike, and in other ways, so very different. He just hoped Steve was having a good time. And that he wasn't puttin' his foot in his mouth too badly.
Turning his coat collar up against the rising wind, he set off on the road back to the city.
: - - - — — — - - - : - - - — — — - - - : - - - — — — - - - :
"Have you finished with the onion? Danny? Are you even listening to me? Danny!"
At Rosa's shout, Danny jumped almost out of his skin, and very nearly sliced his fingers with the knife he held in his hand. Rosa made a 'tsk' of annoyance.
"Sorry, Rosa. What were you saying?"
"That I need to put the onion in the pan. Surely you have finished cutting it, have you not? Or are you trying to win an award for the most time taken to peel and dice an onion?"
"Mi dispiace," he offered, because she was always quicker to forgive him when he apologised in Italian. "I guess I wasn't paying attention."
"I guess," she snorted, though there was no malice in her words. She subjected him to the same cranky motherliness that she inflicted on Adalina and Paolo. "Your mind has been wandering these past few days. Not to Treviso, I hope?"
Matteo had gone to Treviso, some twenty miles north of Venice, to secure new business for his forge and for Rosa's cheeses. Because he had family there, he'd taken Adalina and Paolo to visit with them. Danny had offered to take care of the goats so that Rosa could join them, but she insisted she couldn't leave her precious livestock, not even if she had a dozen of the finest goatherds looking after them. They would miss her too much, she said. It would sour their milk and ruin their cheese. He didn't know whether that really was the case, or whether Rosa was just really good at bullshitting.
"Just thinking about the weather," he said truthfully.
"Always the weather! I told you, winter will be back."
Yes, she'd told him. Several times. A week ago, the weather had warmed. The temperature had risen to five degrees, and it felt unseasonally warm after so much snow. Now, the icicles that had first clung and then grown from the overhangs of the house were drip drip dripping their life's water away. Soon, there would be no icicles at all.
Only, that was not what Rosa claimed. She said that as January turned to February, the weather would freeze again, and bring more snow. Little Winter, the locals called it, because it had happened every year for as long as any of them could remember. Two weeks' worth of fresh snow would fall, once more covering the land in white and making travel difficult. That was why Matteo had waited so long to visit Treviso. It was easier to travel between Big Winter and Little Winter, so long as they could make it back in time.
He couldn't help feeling restless. Here, in Castello Lavazzo, he was isolated from the world. From the war. He didn't know who was winning, or whether the next people to come marching into town would be enemy or Allied soldiers. And to make matters worse, Adalina was making his occasional social visits to the town… rather awkward.
They were supposed to be cousins. Distant cousins, but still family. But the way she looked at him, and laughed at his jokes, and gave him secret smiles that were blatantly obvious to anyone watching her, it was clear she did not consider him just a cousin. And whilst it was true that people did marry their cousins in some parts of the world—particularly those Deeper, Souther, parts of the of the world—it wasn't helping Danny's ruse one bit to have such a beautiful young cousin showing romantic interest in him.
That was one of the reasons she'd gone to Treviso with her father and brother. Rosa had all but shoo'd her out of the house. Maybe she hoped that in Treviso, Adalina would find some handsome young man to catch her eye. Danny doubted it would work. Adalina was… unfortunately… not shallow like that.
"Here, I have something for you. Perhaps this will take your mind off weather."
She opened one of the kitchen drawers and pulled out a small book. When he saw the gold foil cross symbol beveled into the cover, he wanted to toss it onto the fire. But that would've been very rude, so he didn't.
"Uh, thanks, Rosa. Y'know, I can't remember if I ever told you this, but I'm not particularly religious…"
"You mentioned it." She put down her stirring spoon and turned to face him. "Every night you write, write, write. And every morning, you have nothing to show for it. Maybe you should try reading, instead."
He turned to a random page, and the words jumped out immediately, clear as day. "This is in English."
"Yes, it is in English. Do you think I would give you a book in Italian? You are learning to speak much better, but your reading… I do not think you could read a child's book, much less the book of the Almighty."
He thumbed through the pages, some of the titles familiar, others completely alien to his memory. "Why do you have an English bible?"
"It was a gift, from my English friend's family, when I visited her. I brought it back with me, and put it away when the children were born and I was worried it might fall into young hands and be ruined." A smile ghosted across her lips. "Yesterday, I thought to look through some of my old childhood memories, and I came across this. I had forgotten all about it. Now, I think you should read it."
"Yeah, I'll do that." When Hell froze over.
Rosa had other ideas. She made a little Well? Get on with it! gesture at him. "You can read a passage for me. When I was in England, my friend and I went to a grand cathedral. It is a long time since I have heard these words spoken in English… and never in American English."
"Y'know, I think the original English-English would sound much bett—"
She thwacked his leg with her stirring spoon, leaving a watery mark on the fabric and causing him to yelp more from surprise than pain.
"Since you are no good at cutting vegetables today, I will cut and you will read." The spoon came up in warning, aimed just like a pistol. "And do not denigrate my childhood memories again!"
"Alright, fine, fine." He turned to a random page and began to read.
"If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.
"Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
"Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.
"So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love."
"I wonder what all that's supposed to mean," he mused.
"Is it not obvious? The first verse tells us that without love, words are meaningless. Acts of kindness are empty. Knowledge and faith are without purpose. The second verse tells us that love is pure, and with it, nothing is impossible. And then, when knowledge and faith and words are gone, there will be only love, because love is perfect, and from it comes hope and faith. Through it, we will see the world clearly."
From where he was standing, it sounded mostly like bullshit. What kinda God said all that about love, and then put a caveat on who it could be applied to? If love was so pure, why were some people unable to feel it? Clearly his own parents had never loved him one bit. If love rejoiced at the truth, why did he have to hide his own feelings deep within himself, and burn the letters he wrote every night? Why let people love, and then tell them, actually, you can't love that person. It just wasn't right.
He could see only two possibilities. The first, and probably most likely, was that God was a cruel, hypocrite of an Almighty father. The second was that God just wanted people to love each other—and, of course, Him—but that the people listening and penning the words had got it all wrong and put their own spin on it. In which case, religion was just a really big conspiracy carried out in the name of a God who was either too powerless or too complacent to stop it.
Sometimes he felt flipping God the Vs… but he didn't, because Rosa would actually kill him.
He flipped a few pages ahead, and said, "Hey, I like this chapter better. They're stoning some heretics to death. Guess they didn't read Corinthians."
"You should not be so irreverent, Danny. One day, you may need to ask the Almighty Father for help."
"I can't even trust my own father to give me help. Why on Earth would I ask the Father with a capital-F?"
"Because he brings us miracles." Yeah, tell that to millions of Jews. "Look around you. At everything we are, and everything we have, and the Earth we live on. How do you think this all came to be?"
"We have this thing called 'science' now."
"Bah, I give up. You are hopeless!"
"Ah, but according to the bible, if you have love, you must have hope—even for me! Because love bears all things, right? So if you're admitting that you have no hope for me, you're also admitting that you have no love."
He was quite pleased with that particular line of reasoning, but Rosa looked like she wanted to hit him with the spoon again, so he filled the kettle with water from a clean water bucket and put it on the stove. A cup of reconciliatory tea would see her right.
Whilst waiting for the kettle to boil, he thumbed back to the passage he'd read. Maybe it had one thing right, if nothing else. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face. Now I know in part; then shall I know fully, even as I have been fully known.
It was just like his Oz. At some point, between the innocence of childhood and the worldliness of adulthood, the view had grown dimmer, as if everything was seen through a dark-coloured glass. The magic of Oz had faded from technicolour to monochrome, until he'd found what he hoped and feared might be love. The technicolour had returned. That darkly-coloured glass had been lifted. Face to face with his own reflection, he thought he knew himself better now than he ever had, even though he didn't always understand himself.
Perhaps that was the secret children held. That they saw the world in technicolour. That for them, there was no smoky glass screen to distort their view of the world. And if this bible stuff was right, then didn't that essentially mean that finding and having love was like claiming back a little piece of your childhood? Seeing through eyes that were untainted by the mores of adulthood?
Maybe love had to be difficult, to be worth anything. Maybe it had to be hard to endure, to prove that it was worth enduring. Perhaps it had to be tested, to show that it was strong enough to bear all. Of course, that would be little comfort if he got sent home with a Blue discharge and was then considered inherently unemployable. He wouldn't do well, living on the streets. He liked his comforts too much. Showering. Listening to the radio. Regular meals.
"…did you even hear a word I just said?"
He looked up from the little book, into Rosa's exasperated face.
"I swear, if you were thinking of the weather again—"
"No, I wasn't, I promise. I was just thinking about this passage I read out to you. I mean, I guess it's kinda okay. Definitely one of the better parts of the bible. Not like those sections that deal with the keeping of slaves. I am entirely against slavery. Er, what were you saying?"
"That I think my daughter has fallen in love with you."
"Oh." Well. That cat was out of the bag. Though it was hardly a great secret, the way she smiled at him all the time and made any excuse to touch his hand or his arm or any other part of his body she thought she could innocently get away with. "I was hoping it was just… y'know… a crush."
"Crush? I do not know this word. And the kettle is boiling over."
"Dammit." He grabbed a towel and hauled the bubbling kettle off the stove, letting it cool in the sink for a moment. Steam billowed up and tried to melt his face, but he nimbly stepped back to avoid it. "Crush. It's a type of infatuation. Usually young girls see an attractive guy and have a crush on him. Or young guys see an attractive dame and have a crush on her. Usually, the object of the crush is in some way unattainable."
"Ahh. I do not think Adalina has a crush. She genuinely cares about you. Being with you makes her happy. I would prefer that if you're going to break her heart, you do it sooner, rather than later."
That was Rosa all over; practical to the bone. Not, Don't break my daughter's heart, but If you have to break it, do it fast and soon. She was the most formidable woman he'd ever met.
"C'mon, Rosa, I don't wanna hurt her feelings. She's a good kid."
"Do you have feelings of love for her?"
Jeez, talk about a curve-ball. Could a guy even answer that question without pissing off the mother of the girl in question? Normally, he'd say no, but this was Rosa, and she wasn't like any other mom he'd ever met. And if he lied to her, she'd know it. She could read minds. It was a super-power, or something.
"I dunno, Rosa. Right now, she's just a kid, and she doesn't know what she wants. Not really. I do care about her. I care about her happiness, and her wellbeing, and there are many things about her that I love. For example, she never hit me with a spoon. But I know that the young woman she is today won't be the young woman she is in five years' time. And ten years from now, she'll be a completely different woman, because dames mature so much faster than guys. I see so much in her that I admire, and so many strengths that she's only just beginning to explore. I think I could love the woman she may one day become, but I don't know whether loving me will help her to become that women, or whether I'll prevent her from growing into it."
"Would you not prefer her to mould herself into your ideal of a perfect woman? Would you not prefer to make her into your image?"
"Hell no. Do you know why I'm an accountant, and not, say, an architect or an engineer? It's because I should never, ever be allowed to design things. Or create things. I can't even handle modeling clay. Besides, perfection? Sounds boring. Where's the excitement in that?"
"If only all men thought such things! Sadly, too many men want their women to be this or that. Too few will accept a woman for who she is. I have a feeling that you will find happiness one day, Danny Wells. Whether with Adalina or another… the who is not as important as the happiness."
"You're subtly referencing Corinthians there, aren't you?"
"Yes." She gave the pan of whatever she was cooking a quick stir before turning back to him. "Also, Matteo has a friend in Treviso, who has a friend who has a cousin who does papers. I have asked him to procure you some."
"What do you mean, does papers?"
He knew what she meant, but it was hard to believe that law-abiding Rosa would sanction such lawlessness.
"Forging, of course. Matteo will get you French papers, proving that you are a relative of his, and a legal French resident. With your papers, you will be free. You can travel openly, or you can stay here. The choice is yours… but you must make it after Little Winter."
His mind reeled. Papers? They weren't easy to come by, and they didn't come cheap. As well, Matteo was taking a big risk, going straight to the source and not through an intermediary. If something went wrong, he'd be facing a lifetime sentence in a Nazi work-camp, and it wouldn't be a particularly long lifetime.
"Rosa, how can I possibly thank you?" he asked.
"Work hard to recover your shoulder, feed the goats every day, and chop vegetables in a timely fashion. Plus, when the time comes to make the choice, to stay or to go, you must do what you feel is right. The best way to live, is to live honestly. It is the most any of us can do."
Live honestly. He wasn't sure he even knew what that meant anymore. But maybe Rosa was right about one thing… maybe he was writing too much. He hefted the small book, then slipped it into his pocket. Tonight, he'd see whether the words could offer any further nuggets of wisdom. Some other ways of seeing through the dark glass.