Chris Pavone Famous Quotes
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Dexter was too legit," Julia continued. "His life was too verifiable, too aboveboard. He was nobody's spy, nobody's mole, nobody's rat. He was who he is. And he didn't know that you weren't.
Circumstantial evidence may not be enough to convict. But it's almost always enough to reveal the truth. Isn't it?
She hoped that a day would come when she wouldn't be suspicious of everyone who walked by.
This had been part of her training, part of her career, part of herself: whatever was going on, live like a normal person. Do normal things, see normal people. Don't give anyone a reason to question you, investigate you. Don't give them any meaningful answers to prying questions that might be asked after you've disappeared. Don't create any suspicion that you were not who you claimed to be.
You're going to make a lot of money? In Luxembourg?"
"Yes."
"How?"
"They have a shortage of great-looking men. So they're going to pay me a bucket-load for being incredibly handsome and staggeringly sexy.
I don't want you to explain. I want you to convince me I'm wrong. Or admit I'm right.
It hadn't taken very long to come clean, after so many years of so many lies. It was surprising how undifferent she felt, now that everything - nearly everything - was out in the open.
She didn't want to give the murder-pornography frame by frame. Didn't want to recite her route across Manhattan, the length of the knife blade and the number of times she pulled the trigger, the color of the blood-splattered wallpaper in the hotel room, the man falling to the floor, the baby crying in the next room, the woman emerging and dropping the bottle, its nipple popping off and the milk spilling onto the carpet, the woman pleading "Por favor," her hands up, shaking her head, asking - begging - for her life to be spared, her big black eyes wide, deep sinkholes of dark terror, while Kate trained the Glock on her, a seemingly eternal internal debate, while the baby sounded like he was the same age as Jake, late infancy, and this poor woman the same age as Kate, a different version of herself, an unlucky woman who didn't deserve to die.
I was young, and I was damaged, and I couldn't imagine being not young, and not damaged.
Maybe he was wondering if they could make it, such liars, together. A marriage based on so many things that were not true. A life lived so falsely, for so long.
Kate didn't know that Dexter hadn't admitted all his lies. Just as she hadn't revealed every one of her secrets.
I thought you make your living as a thief."
"No," he said. "That's what I do for fun.
Kate had always known that she herself was a strong woman. But it never occured to her that there were strong women everywhere, living mundane lives that didnt include carrying weapons amid desperate men on the fringes of third-world wars, but instead calmly taking injured children to hospitals, far from home. Far from their mothers, and fathers and siblings, from school chums and old collegues. In a place where they had no one to rely on except them-selves, for everything.
As they'd agreed the night before on their cold balcony, scripting out this dialog, there would be three large lies in this conversation. This was the first.
You talking about computer weaknesses?"
"Yes. But also human weaknesses."
"Meaning what?"
"Meaning the types of weaknesses that make humans let down their guard. Trust people they shouldn't trust."
"You're talking about manipulating people."
"Yes." Dexter and Lester were staring at each other. "I guess I am.
It hasn't taken long to find herself thinking that people are watching. And that they always have been, all the time. It was only a few months ago that Kate had finally been able to imagine she was living a totally surveillance-free life.
On the semi-frozen river below, a duck quacked insistently, sounding like a grumpy old man agruing with a cashier.
The new man was again staring at her, staring at him, challenging her, knowing that she was considering him, wanting her to know that he was considering her. She couldn't help but wonder what it would be like to be with a man who absolutely didn't need her, but merely wanted her.
Now that it was finally here, she wasn't surprised to find herself still reluctant to start it. Reluctant to end the part of her life when this conversation hadn't happened yet. Reluctant to find out what her life would look like after it.
People will think we're having an affair," Kate said. She took a seat next to Bill on the cold slats of treated wood.
"That would be better than the truth.
But she was still operating on lonely-person principles, still worried that her happiness could be wrenched away at any moment, for reasons out of her control.
Kate was beginning to put distance between her sense of betrayal, her anger, and Dexter's behavior. She was beginning to take his side. Or at least beginning to be able to see things from it.
She began to sacrifice that old identity to live in her new one. It was the new life, after all, that everyone wanted.
She was seduced by the romance of it; she was energized by the possibilities.
They are permanent tourists, in Paris. Their life is a certain type of dream come true.
Kate was never going to understand the extent to which men were stupid.
It didn't need to be light to be day.
They were ticking off items on a to-do list that was magnet-attached to the fridge. There were nineteen items on the list. They'd crossed off fifteen. The final item was underlined: Make a life.
Grudges," she said, "are timeless.
She was not in a position to complain about this life, not yet. Probably not ever.
Another of her husband's silent lies.
She glances at each of her three companions, at the protective veneers they're all wearing, trying to mask the different lies they've told one another. The lies they're all continuing to try to maintain. Hoping these lies will carry them through the rest of their full and satisfying lives, despite the truths they've chosen not to tell the most important people in their worlds.
You know what this means?
Everyone does, but nobody answers.
It was impossible to understand how brief it is. It seemed like youth would last so long; it would last forever. But it's just a blink.
Because when people are transferring millions of dollars, they don't simply hit the Send button on their computer.
She was picking a fight because it was Thanksgiving, and she was not thankful.
Would they have a life together anymore, after tonight? Or was this it? The end?
This was a bizarre moment: this crossing-over from a hypothetical plan to a concrete caper, giving in to what may turn out to be an utterly outlandish idea, possibly letting go of some important tether to sanity. Deciding yes: I will do this. But not deciding it 100 percent, because that wold be admitting too much to herself, about herself, that she didn't want to admit. But deciding it 95 percent, enough to take the possibly outlandish action, but not enough to believe beyond a reasonable doubt that this wasn't just a goof, a lark, but an actual non-insane plan.
The second impediment was that she didn't want to acknowledge that part of her impetus to Internet stalking was a long habit of trusting no one. A habit whose genesis was the self-knowledge that she herself was untrustworthy.
She knew what he was thinking: if she was asking questions like these, she was trying to understand. Trying to forgive him. He was right.
It's impossible to know which parts of the woman, if any, were real.
But there's this giant deception at the foundation of their relationship, their happiness. This impure motive. There was that small mistake that the woman made, uttering the wrong number. And then the man reconstructed an entire intrigue, a big thick plot - a seduction and affair and relationship and marriage proposal, a whole life - around her error and his notice of it. Taking advantage of her lie.
But does that make their relationship less real? Does that make it impossible that they genuinely love each other?
We all see ourselves as the center of everything.
It would make a lot more sense if she had imagined this whole thing, her whole life. Now would just be now, attached to some other, more straightforward past.
Whatever her husband had done, it couldn't be as bad as what she herself had done.
She loved him so much. Even when she hated him.
So my sister, she slipped through the cracks of the disaster of our family. She became her own disaster.
What she did know, unfortunately, was that she had to reconsider everything she'd ever willed herself to believe about her husband.
So tell me how you think this ends.
This is the expat life: you never know when someone you see every day is going to disappear forever, instantly transmogrifying into a phantom. Before long you won't be able to remember her last name, the color of her eyes, the grades that her children were in. You can't imagine not seeing her tomorrow. You can't imagine you yourself being one of those people, someone who one day just vanishes. But you are.
Malcolm gestures in the vague direction of ugly sad lonely crap, which as it happens is toward Times Square.
But if you move fast, you can have your freedom.
Plus she had to admit that a small part of her secrecy was that she was holding something back, for herself. If she never told Dexter the truth, she was still reserving the right to return to her old life. To one day be a covert operative again. To be a person who could keep the largest secrets from everyone, including her husband, forever.
But quitting didn't change what she'd already done. The piece of her past that she'd never be able to outrun.
Each of those photos proves a different thing. All those things add up to the truth.
But when Kate returned home he was gone. Back to the video camera that had recorded her. Back to his unexplainable office. Back to his secret phone, his unfamiliar contacts, his fifty million stolen euros. Back to his other life.
That was the secret to maintaining lies: not trying to hide them.
And everyone's in the same situation, basically: we're all finding our separate ways, together.
It was becoming difficult to separate her own decisions from those made by others, for her, on behalf of themselves.
There was a guy with extra millions in the bank. And he spent all his free time, all his energy, spending his money. His cars, his houses, his vacations. Just like the rich bankers here in Luxembourg, whose business was making money and whose passion was spending it.
The best hiding spots are not the most hidden; they're merely the least searched.
So she forgave him. And instead she berated herself for her suspicion, for her snooping. For the things she promised herself she wouldn't do, the feelings she wouldn't have.
What do you do with children, all the time? In Washington, she'd had charge of the kids on weekends; preschools and the nanny had borne the brunt of the day-to-day child-care responsibilities. She'd wanted more time with the kids, then.
But all people have secrets. Part of being human is having secrets, and being curious about other people's secrets. Dirty fetishes and debilitating fascinations and shameful defeats and ill-begotten triumphs, humiliating selfishness and repulsive inhumanity. The horrible things that people have thought and done, the lowest points in their lives.