The men were repulsed by what they perceived as female traits but abhorred women who “acted like men.” They bemoaned gold-diggers, but simultaneously argued that a man’s role was as breadwinner. It made no sense.

Music so often said what Celie herself couldn’t.

She knew her friends thought they were helping, but this was what self-preservation looked like for Ola: solitary confinement. Being holed up in her room without contact was the only conceivable way to survive this.

Plus she’d never liked the idea of a dowry, as was custom in traditional ceremonies—even a symbolic one. Taking his surname had already felt traitorous enough.

“He doesn’t make me as sad as I’d be without him,” she said, truthfully.

The success of their marriage wasn’t determined by its happiness, but by the fact it was still going.

After twenty-nine years of everyone in the Koranteng family pretending they had no emotions other than anger, he was supposed to start talking about his feelings? He loved his mother dearly—she had sacrificed everything for her son, her family. But that didn’t mean he could confide in her.

How could he explain that his phone gave him anxiety, that every time it vibrated, panic rippled through his body?

They weren’t bad boys, his boys. But wasn’t that the issue? Why was “not bad” so often good enough?