She cared about him too much, and he was a dangerous person to love. He wouldn't love her back.
Ann BrasharesShe liked the life she had. She loved habits. She craved a day with nothing in it, a long, quiet stretch of hours in the studio.
Ann BrasharesThe most haunting thing was not that he didn't love her anymore. She could have accepted that eventually. The most haunting thing was that he did. He loved her from afar. He loved her in a way that was preserved in time, that couldn't be sullied. And she tended it in her careful, curatorial way.
Ann BrasharesLooking back, it was the thing in his life that shamed him the most: the times he was purposefully, calculatingly mean to Alice. It was those moments, and there had been many of them, that indicated to him that he was not a good person. He got mad at her for many things, but it was always really for the same thing: that she possessed his love and he couldn't seem to get it back. She didn't deserve it, which was to say she deserved better
Ann Brashares