A wrecked marriage scares everyone. It’s like a rock tossed into a still blue pond; the ripples go on and on.
She is so certain of everything. This war is black and white for her. Nothing seems to scare her.
No single word was big enough to adequately describe the loss of your mother.
Matthew grieved for the mother he’d had. He figured Leni would grieve for the dad she wanted.
She had read countless romantic novels in her life and she had dreamed of love forever; even so, she’d never known that a plain old double mattress could become a world unto itself, an oasis.
Because of them, I know now what matters, and it is not what I have lost. It is my memories. Wounds heal. Love lasts. We remain.
People think love is an act of faith,” her mother said. “Sometimes it’s an act of will.
It would always be a part of her, a scar on her soul, but like all scars, it faded in time from a bright and burning red to a slim, silvery line that could only sometimes be seen.
The high she’d felt when he took that first breath had gone. Like getting to the top of a roller coaster: there was a nanosecond of pure exhilaration before the headlong plunge into fear.
She was a teacher, for God’s sake. What did she know to say about dangers such as these? How could she assuage a child’s fear when her own was straining at the leash?
You must stay strong.” “By believing in God.” “Yes, of course, but not only by believing in God. Prayers and faith will not be enough, I’m afraid. The path of righteousness is often dangerous.
Her tears were slow in forming; it was as if each one were made of blood and too thick to pass through her tear ducts. Memories came at her like a kaleidoscope:.
Leni shrugged. She didn’t know exactly what to say, or how to say it without revealing too much. “He has – nightmares – and bad weather can set him off. Sometimes. But he hasn’t had a nightmare since we moved here. So maybe he’s better.
I love you... It feels like I’ve loved you forever. I never knew it could be this way... that love could catch you when you fell.
But the connection between pain and love wasn’t linear. It was a web.
It’s too bad we don’t live life backward. I think it was Kierkegaard who said that.
She knew about death, about the grief that ripped you apart and left you broken forever.
Nightingales mean loss, don’t they? Love that leaves or doesn’t last or never existed in the first place.
Sometimes a story sneaks up on you, hits you hard and dares you to look away. That was the case with The Nightingale. In.
But no matter how hard they all tried to be normal, their life was a dirty window that couldn’t be wiped clean. Everything, every moment, was coated by illness.