Real peace cannot be bought at all.

It can only be built, on a foundation of things that are actually true, and it is worth, I have found, every hard and frightening thing it costs to lay that foundation.

“How does it feel?” Malcolm asked.

He was watching me carefully, the way a friend watches.

I looked out at the harbor, where cargo ships moved steadily across the gray-blue water, each one guided by beacons and charts and the patient unglamorous machinery that keeps large things from running aground.

I watched the ships a long time that evening, because there was a lesson in them I wanted to sit with.