There is no grief like heartbreak.

...love is the sum of our choices, the strength of our commitments, the ties that bind us together.

ONE MORE CHNCE. Words that my mother heard, more than once. Words that women debate. Whether you CAN forgive and whether you SHOULD trust. I think of all the judgment from society, friends, and family, the overwhelming consensus seeming to be that you should not grant someone who betrayed you a second chance. That you should do everything you can to keep the knife out of your back, and to protect your heart and pride. Cowards give second chances. Fools give second chances. And I am no coward, no fool.

Things are what they are and there's no point dwelling in the past or wondering what could have been.

It always takes two. For relationships to work, for them to break apart, for them to be fixed.

I nod, thinking of how difficult marriage can be, how much effort is required to sustain a feeling between two people - a feeling that you can't imagine will ever fade in the beginning when everything comes so easily. I think of how each person in a marriage owes it to the other to find individual happiness, even in a shared life. That is the only real way to grow together, instead of apart.

I've always loved sister stories in fiction, from the time I was little, reading about Beezus and Ramona. I've always wanted to write a sister story.