Men will be men,” Maureen told me when I wondered aloud where my father went in the evenings. “Don’t complain,” she advised. “That’s how women find their freedom. When there’s no one else at home.
This is what happens when you stay in one place for thirteen years,” Anne says. “First you own things. Then they own you.
It was as if when he had been stolen as an infant, he had come back as a changeling, as if someone had reached inside him and grabbed his heart to keep under lock and key.
Always love someone who will love you back.
It was a clear, bright, beautiful day, the air tinged with salt, the climbing roses blooming. The graveyard was filled with sunlight.
Sisters were sisters, after all, and if they didn’t stick up for each other, who would?
Will her husband love her?” “Would you want love you had to buy?” Isabelle asked.
In Massachusetts everything had a faint green aroma, a combination of cucumber, wisteria, dogwood, and peppermint.
I don’t make all the decisions, you know,” Isabelle managed to say. “I just do the best I can to face what life brings. That’s the secret, you know. That’s the way you change your fate.
You’re better than this,” Franny said. “Am I? I see things I can’t change, Franny. When I drink I stop the visions. It was in pieces but it’s coming together in one picture. And lately, what I’ve been seeing is an accident. A bad one. And soon.
Elinor would have surely ignored them, such was her habit and her inclination, even though she knew whenever someone ignored what hurt her most, she’d wind up in grave circumstances. Ignore love, she now understood, and a person might bleed forever, even if no one could tell.
Shouldn’t he have waited?” “Not when you told him to go away. People believe you when you say things like that. You never told him you loved him, did you?
For women who wanted a child, mistletoe was to be strung over their beds. If that had no effect, they must tie nine knots in a strong rope, then burn the rope and eat the ashes and soon enough they would conceive.
Blue must be worn for protection.
It was too exciting a time to be tied down to school.
Remind customers they must be careful what they wish for, Isabelle instructed. What’s done cannot be undone. What’s set into motion takes on a life of its own.
Moonstones were useful in connecting with the living, topaz to contact the dead. Copper, sacred to Venus, will call a man to you, and black tourmaline will eliminate jealousy.
Every time a new house was built, a bucket of peach stones would be found, and even children on their way to school knew that finding one meant luck, whatever the outcome: love forgotten, love gone wrong, love despite all odds, love ever after, love after all this time.
When it came to love, you must always be careful. If you dropped something belonging to the man you loved into a candle flame, then added pine needles and marigold flowers, he would arrive on your doorstep by morning, so you would do well to be certain you wanted him there.
The most basic and reliable love potion was made from anise, rosemary, honey, and cloves boiled for nine hours on the back burner of the old stove.
A glass breaking on its own portended death.