Faithful Place

want Holly to be aware that there is a difference between truth and meaningless gibberish bullshit. She’s completely surrounded, from every angle, by people telling her that reality is one hundred percent subjective: if you really believe you’re a star then you deserve a record contract whether or not you can sing for shit, and if you really believe in weapons of mass destruction then it doesn’t actually matter whether they exist or not, and fame is the be-all and end-all because you don’t exist unless enough people are paying attention to you. I want my daughter to learn that not everything in this world is determined by how often she hears it or how much she wants it to be true or how many other people are looking. Somewhere in there, for a thing to count as real, there has got to be some actual bloody reality. God knows she’s not going to learn that anywhere else.

All the way out to the car I could feel her behind me, the heat of her, like a clear white light burning steadily in the dark conservatory. It was the only thing that got me home.

I was about to get out and climb into the back to hug her tight. It hit me just in time: this wasn’t a little kid howling, waiting for Daddy to sweep her up in his arms and make everything all better. We had left that behind, somewhere in Faithful Place.

She genuinely had no idea. She had left the Shay situation in Daddy’s capable hands; as far as she was concerned, that meant it was sorted, over and done with. One of my main ambitions had been for her to go through life, or at least a few more years of it, without discovering it didn’t work that way.

“You know something? Sooner or later, you’re going to have to ditch this idea that you’ve spent your life being everyone’s little knight in shining armor. Don’t get me wrong, it’s entertaining to watch, but there’s a fine line between illusion and delusion, and you’re bouncing along that line.”

Plenty of people have told me—and several of them even meant it as a compliment—that I have a God-given talent for fucking with people’s minds; and what you can do to strangers is nothing compared to what you can do to your very own family.

I’m an old-fashioned kind of guy. I still think my inner reality should get in sync with the outer one.

When I do nothing, I like it to have a purpose.

Holly has a two-home kid’s passion for cross-checking

I have no scruples about lying to most people, but I have a whole separate conscience just for Holly.