In Each Man's Heart There

She Says There Are Stories Everywhere And That People Who Wait For The Right One To Come Along Before Setting Pen To Paper End Up With Very Empty Pages.

Lil Had Always Believed That A Person's Duty Was To Make The Best Of The Hand They Were Dealt. No Use Wondering What Might Have Been, She Used To Say, All That Matters Is What Is.

It Was The Sibling Thing, I Suppose. I Was Fascinated By The Intricate Tangle Of Love And Duty And Resentment That Tied Them Together. The Glances They Exchanged; The Complicated Balance Of Power Established Over Decades; The Games I Would Never Play With Rules I Would Never Fully Understand. And Perhaps That Was Key: They Were Such A Natural Group That They Made Me Feel Remarkably Singular By Comparison. To Watch Them Together Was To Know Strongly, Painfully, All That I'd Been Missing.

But Everyone's An Expert With The Virtue Of Hindsight . . . .

Wars Make History Seem Deceptively Simple. They Provide Clear Turning Points, Easy Distinctions.: Before And After, Winner And Loser, Right And Wrong. True History, The Past, Is Not Like That. It Isn't Flat Or Linear. It Has No Outline. It Is Slippery, Like Liquid; Infinite And Unknowable, Like Space. And It Is Changeable: Just When You Think You See A Pattern, Perspective Shifts, An Alternate Version Is Proffered, A Long-forgotten Memory Resurfaces.