She, who had once believed she would never leave a mark on anybody, knew now that the marks she had left were unerasable, as much a part of forever as the sea.

She had once believed she would never have a family, but here they were, too.

It’s a leap of faith to love people and let yourself be loved. It’s closing your eyes, stepping off a ledge into nothing, and trusting that you’ll fly rather than fall.

but here she was again, just as she’d been as a child, trapped on the hamster wheel of her mind, conducting a postmortem on every memory to find out what, if anything, had been real

“It’s not always enough to go looking for the place we belong,” Jamie said, his eyes on the house ahead. “Sometimes we need to make that place.”

“I’m afraid I’ll never leave a mark on anybody.”

Maybe some kinds of trauma can’t be revisited—and some need to be.”

is that when someone leaves, all you can do is leave a window open for them so that one day, if they choose, they can come back.”

to be a witch is to be exploited when it’s convenient and turned against when it isn’t.