I had spent a year seeing him as the sad old man across the way — the one the neighborhood pitied a little, the one whose quiet everyone mistook for loneliness.

It occurred to me, over that first cup of coffee, that I had been exactly as wrong about him as everyone had been.

Quiet is not the same as empty.

Sometimes the quietest house on the road is the one with the most inside it, kept carefully out of view.

I noticed something else that morning, too, something it took me weeks to find the words for.

Cormac never asked me for the story.