Hope was an elevator right now, broken from its cables.
She found herself secretly mapping his face, memorizing every ridge and hollow and valley, as if she were an explorer and he her discovery.
For years, she’d mistaken habit and affection for true love. She had assumed that the love she gave her husband was a reflection of the love he felt for her, and now, because of her blindness, she was alone.
Ask for help when you need it, and give help when you can. I think that is how we serve God – and each other and ourselves – in times as dark as these.
The past has a clarity I can no longer see in the present.
Leni saw suddenly how hope could break you, how it was a shiny lure for the unwary. What happened to you if you hoped too hard for the best and got the worst? Was it better not to hope at all, to prepare? Wasn’t that what her father’s lesson always was? Prepare for the worst.
Love is such a slippery thing.
Mama gave a tired laugh. Leni understood. You could be as careful as a chemist with nitroglycerin around dad. It wouldn’t change a thing. Sooner or later, he was going to blow.
But he wasn’t that man anymore. He had lost too much, and in his loss, he’d thrown more away.
If he loved you guys, he wouldn’t hurt you.” He made it sound so simple, as if it were a mathematical equation. But the connection between pain and love wasn’t linear. It was a web.
I look at him, loving this child of mine and knowing my death will devastate him. I don’t want him to watch me die by degrees. I don’t want that for his daughters, either. I know what it is like; some images, once seen, can never be forgotten. I want them to remember me as I am, not as I will be when the cancer has had its way.
Vianne knew Rachel wasn’t asking how to hide in the barn; she was asking how to live after a loss like this, how to pick up one child and let the other go, how to keep breathing after you whisper “good-bye.” “I can’t leave her.
And maybe that was how it was supposed to be, how life unfolded when you lived it long enough. Joy and sadness were part of the package; the trick, perhaps, was to let yourself feel all of it, but to hold on to the joy just a little more tightly because you never knew when a strong heart could just give out.
The glass can be half empty or half full.” Leni knew the glass was broken.
Here’s what I want you to know: I loved my life. For so long I was waiting for it to start, waiting for more. It seemed like all I did was drive and shop and wait. But you know what? I didn’t miss a thing with my family. Not a moment. I was there for all of it. That’s what I’ll remember, and they’ll have each other.
Coffee?” Isabelle finger-combed her hair and tied a cotton scarf around her head. “No, merci, it is too precious.” The old woman gave her a smile. “No one suspects a woman my age of anything. It makes me good at trading. Here.” She offered Isabelle a cracked porcelain mug full of steaming black coffee. Real coffee. Isabelle wrapped her hands around the mug and breathed deeply of the familiar, never-again-to-be-taken-for-granted aroma. Madame.
She wanted to daydream, pretend that her world was upright instead of fallen on its side;.
Fear was a mansion, one room after another, connected by endless hallways.
Alaska was full of fringe-ists. People who believed in weirdo things and prayed to exclusionary Gods and filled their basements with equal measures of guns and Bibles. If you wanted to live in a place where no one told you what to do and didn’t care if you parked a trailer in your yard or had a fridge on your porch, Alaska was the state for you.
The smile he gave her was barely one at all. “We are all fragile, Isabelle. It’s the thing we learn in war.