But she wasn’t an I. She was a we.
Love. Family. Laughter. That’s what I remember when it’s all said and done.
Adults always talked about mistakes, the cost of doing the wrong thing. She wished she’d listened now.
She knew Miles didn’t understand. Last night he’d made that sound – that sigh of desperation or despair – when she couldn’t change into a nightgown. He didn’t understand how fragile she felt. If she lifted her arms, they might break off.
It’s not intentions that matter. It’s actions. My drill instructor used to say that all the time. We are what we do and say, not what we intend to. I.
Angie looked at her. There was a heavy sadness in her eyes. “I wish I could make everything okay. But some dreams just pass us by. It’s the way life is.
You blame yourself when they are the ones to blame.” Rose gave her a steady, reassuring look. “Remember, cara, hard times don’t last. Land and family do.” TWELVE In November, the first winter storm battered them from the north, leaving behind a fine layer of snow.
Come,” Sasha says again, kissing me, and I follow. I know that if I look back, I will see my body, old and withered, slumped on that bench in the snow, that if I wait, I will hear my daughters discover what has happened and begin to cry. So I do not look back. I hold on to my Sasha and kiss my lion’s throat. I have waited so, so long for this, to see them again. To feel like this, and I know my girls will be okay now.
This is what my story gave them, and in the past ten years, we have loved enough for a lifetime. I think, Good-bye, my girls. I love you. I have always loved you. And I go.
The street was a living, breathing dragon of humanity, inching forward, wheezing dirt, honking horns; people yelling for help, babies crying, and the smell of sweat heavy in the air.
Sometimes a thing was its truest self when the colors were stripped away.
They just had to muddle along and live in the world presented to them, confused a lot of the time because nothing made sense, but certain of their subterranean place on the food chain.
For a magnificent moment, the world fell away and she was somewhere else, before now, or long from now, and she wasn’t hungry or tired or scared or angry. She simply was. She closed her eyes and felt at peace for the first time in years. Safe.
He hadn’t realized how time could unspool the years of your life until for a second you were fourteen again, crying from a place so deep it seemed to predate you, desperate to be whole again.
You are my sunlight in the dark and the ground beneath my feet. Because of you, I can survive.
Love wasn’t a great, burning brushfire that swept across your soul and charred you beyond recognition. It was being there, simply that.
Let me tell you something else I know. When you hide things away, and keep them secret, they have a... power.
She thought about the chain of choices that had led her here. A ten-degree shift anywhere along the way and everything would be different.
In real life, she saw, it wasn’t like that. It was sadness opening up inside of you, changing how you saw the world. It made her think about God and what He offered at times like this. She wondered for the first time what her parents believed in, what she believed in, and she saw how the idea of Heaven could be comforting.
Leni hadn’t understood then. Now she did. She saw how love could be dangerous and beyond control. Ravenous. Leni had it in her to love the way her mother did. She knew that now.