Nina was glad they didn’t have to go back to the bedrooms, where there might be padded walls or sinks chained to the floor or patients strapped into straitjackets, all of which would undoubtedly also burrow their way into her dreams.

William Safire

He’d have a conniption, horrified at her recklessness. Although she’d have countered that it wasn’t so much recklessness as a profoundly arrogant failure of imagination: she hadn’t believed Gardner was a murderer, so it must not have been true.

What, she chided herself, you believe in signs now? On the other hand, as signs went, this was pretty hard to ignore.

more cramped than she’d expected, with almost no windows, and the walls were covered with dozens of framed photographs: smiling babies, boys playing various sports, young men graduating and driving a car. Oh, they were all Gardner. Every photo. Gardner, Gardner, Gardner. “Is your mom home?” she asked, suddenly terrified of running into her. No

Now was the time to say something, tell Stephanie the truth, or at least what she believed to be true, if she could just summon the courage. That they weren’t invincible, and there wasn’t always a second chance. That life wasn’t always long. That Patrick would drag her down and strangle her spirit. That the things that had hurt them weren’t their

Her favorite kind of book, the bleak end laid out at the start so you didn’t have to worry about an unpleasant surprise.

It wasn’t so easy, she’d explain to Stephanie tomorrow night, to tell someone something you knew would smash their world into pieces.

Funny how someone who dropped into your life from out of nowhere could make more sense than the people entrenched there from the start.