Forgiveness is a gift of high value. Yet its cost is nothing.

It's come at last," she thought, "the time when you can no longer stand between your children and heartache. When there wasn't enough food in the house you pretended that you weren't hungry so they could have more. In the cold of a winter's night you got up and put your blanket on their bed so they wouldn't be cold. You'd kill anyone who tried to harm them - I tried my best to kill that man in the hallway. Then one sunny day, they walk out in all innocence and they walk right into the grief that you'd give your life to spare them from.

Those were the Rommely women: Mary, the mother, Evy, Sissy, and Katie, her daughters, and Francie, who would grow up to be a Rommely woman even though her name was Nolan. They were all slender, frail creatures with wondering eyes and soft fluttery voices. But they were made out of thin invisible steel.

As long as one can suffer, one is living....live and suffer until life is gone.

They learned no compassion from their own anguish. thus their suffering was wasted.

She had become accustomed to being lonely. She was used to walking alone and to being considered 'different.' She did not suffer too much.

Books became her friends, and there was one for every mood.