Home > Author > Jonathan Epps
1 " I half expected to hear that stupid cackling laugh again, but there was just the fluttering of new leaves blowing in the cooler breeze. The sunken moon sat on the cosmic ledge like a judge sentencing me to doom. In the bright moonlight, I felt the depth of my ineptitude. To throw off my rage at the world, at myself, I picked up a rock and chucked it across the field, and then I went back home. "
― Jonathan Epps , No Winter Lasts Forever
2 " Everyone kept moving along, like no bad thing would ever happen to them; that sort of thing was only on Twitter or the news feeds. They were safe. Nothing would happen to them. Even in the very spot where it had happened, people moved on with their lives. It was either impressive human-spirit stuff or just total, impenetrable ignorance: the belief that death naturally wasn’t a part of their lives. "
3 " No wonder they don’t like her,” Valdivia said to herself. A woman who is good at her job always rocks the boat, she thought. She knew this from experience, but didn’t think she had run into the archetypal boys’ club in New Valley; however, Valdivia never dropped her guard to the possibility. It was then she realized the chief’s lack of interest in the case, his attempt to dissuade her from her instincts, was just a softer version of the same old thing. "
― Jonathan Epps , Until Morning Comes
4 " In her present mind, the old days glimmered like the sparkle across enchanted seas: weekends in the English countryside; hot, pulsing Miami nights; New York galas. She could not help but indulge the memories. Nothing made her feel more alive than to swindle someone, to persuade them, to manipulate them, to control them. "
5 " I imagined there were people out there in the darker shadows, some dragging their feet like the walking dead, some scanning like predators, some cowering like victims. I wanted to absorb it all, suck it down, destroy it—the vision, the scene, the barbarism. "
6 " She told herself, finally, that she must face it or die . . . But this was just a whisper in the self, that flutter within which starts as a tiny plea and fights to grow in strength and resonance. So, she stood by it and fought for it, but not before her life and her love took the losses redemption almost always exacts from the redeemed. "
7 " It was a cooler morning than usual, but it was a welcomed difference. The many childhood summers she had spent on the French Riviera were now a simple memory, her younger adult years in the Caribbean now packed away into the past. The cooler New England temperatures helped to mitigate the heat of her present concerns. "
8 " Ava had to get Maxime’s location soon so she could get out of there. She’d seen enough of this place and its people that she never wanted to come back. She texted the judge: Do you have the information? I need it. I have to leave here soon. "
9 " Valdivia had to hold back the familiar mixture of sadness, rage, and revulsion to keep herself from shouting at the world in front of her. Of course, she had seen bad things before. But now, violence against women was a particular anguish, and the pursuit of their killers had become a personal mission. "
10 " Sitting in the cruiser, staring through this memory, she wondered why it was so hard for a headstrong woman in this world, in this country—why she had to be so alone to be who she was, and not just Valdivia herself, but every woman who is a lone wolf on the slick, icy tundra. "
11 " Daily, she went over the story, ramming it through the turnstile in her mind, making sure she hadn’t missed anything major. She did not want to be caught off guard if she was ever questioned. She had to have thought of everything. And what of those things she could not anticipate? She’d simply answer, “I don’t know. I have no knowledge of that. Someone else might be able to tell you. "
12 " Ava was almost twenty-six, on her own, in a decent and mostly stable relationship, eternally grateful to be away from Jeffrey Hoffman’s clutches. Hoffman had held her captive for just over four years until she escaped that life at eighteen. In the first few years of her escape, she’d had as much therapy as she could tolerate, preferring to get on with things. "
13 " I had to keep living as much as I fought against that fact. I quit my job. And I hit the road. I figured I would do nothing but wander, for however long I could manage it, spending a month here and there, wherever. Maybe to relax. Maybe to escape. Maybe to sort through the turmoil within me. "
14 " Driving around town, I found myself staring down older teenagers and college-aged boys and young men. Any sign or signal less than mindful obedience to the law, to orderly conduct and my rage ticked up one notch higher. "
15 " Everything seemed to be falling apart. I had to stop myself and recognize all the good, plain people around me. But it seemed that more and more people were spoiling. And this gut feeling was hard to shake. Just listening to the news, I found myself throwing things across the room, full force—the remote, my work pager, small things I resented. "
16 " The same old debate was all over the news within the hour. The headline on the next day’s newspaper read, “KILL EVERYTHING.” This simple phrase was cut from a longer statement posted online from the killers. Kill everything? I thought. Not even kill everyone? Just obliterate everything? "
17 " My heart beat faster because I didn’t know what I would see or read, and I knew Luke might be in there, and I didn’t want to imagine or to confirm anything bad about him. I scanned the right margin, where all the names or aliases of the room’s members were listed. Weird-looking names, most of which made no sense to me. And then I spotted Fonzie at the bottom. "
18 " I couldn’t believe what I was reading. Did young guys talk like this? For real? I didn’t remember knowing any psychopaths when I was twenty years old. Jesus Christ. Who talked like that? Then I remembered when I was a kid I had watched Faces of Death with the other neighborhood idiots, and I calmed down a bit. "
19 " That evening, Penny came over with dinner and ended up staying the night. Each of us found comfort in the other, I would say. We didn’t say I love you, but we were very careful with each other. Maybe I loved her. I imagined I did. I imagined she loved me too. "
20 " I could feel my aged, hard-won masculinity being eroded each millisecond I stayed. It got to the point that only the depths of their vileness gave them any kind of status, and this was both the most pathetic but most dangerous of all. This was the kernel of my intrigue: did this sort of daring morbidity escalate, cross over from virtual to real? And when? "
