Claire felt a swell of love for Joan, and she knew why: you love the people who take care of you.

In the core of the bystander there is always a false sense of power, of responsibility.

Laura’s was Anne Sexton, and Naomi’s was Sylvia Plath.

I’d been pushing ahead of everybody for years, like Plath, and I saw that none of it would mean anything in the long run, that I would die like everyone else.”

Death, usually such a divider, was the thing that held them together.

Lucy would not allow it; she always kept herself at a safe distance from both her parents. She had learned early to be independent.

Wasn’t that a universal fantasy—trying to guess what would happen after you died, how your loved ones would react?

There was supposed to be nothing as good as freedom. But what if your natural environment was captivity to begin with?

Profound things happened when you weren’t looking, and there were times when you couldn’t look, when you had to close your eyes for a moment of private darkness.