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"I wasn't raised like this."

I already knew. Had he told me before? It was likely his brother, who was a liar, but that was irrelevant now.

"Only babies cry."

I knew that, too. I knew he was a baby; they were all sweet babies, the lot of them. They thought they were grown and acted in their versions of grown-up ways… but they were babies.

"Thank God for Arkansas."

That's where his redemption started: a crowded cell in middle Arkansas. That's where he came from. We caught him in the middle of the DTs from God-knows-what he was hooked on.

"The whole summer I felt like I didn't belong. I wasn't here for the beginning. But now I understand that I sure as hell was supposed to be here for the end."

A tear, hidden on his cheek by hair and darkness, fell from the place where it'd clung to his jaw. It glinted briefly in the candlelight like a fallen star, and was gone.