It is almost always backward.

The one in the background is very often the one holding the actual instruments — the money, the systems, the deeds, the knowledge of how the machine really runs — while the one in the light holds only the appearance of it, which lasts only as long as the quiet one permits.

I had permitted it for seven years.

The permission, not the power, was what I withdrew in that foyer.

And when I withdrew it, the whole gleaming apparatus of Flynn’s importance was revealed for what it had always been: a costume worn over my bones.

Chapter 11 — The Empty Bed