To remind me, pain is the best teacher

Once someone's hurt you, it's harder to relax around them, harder to think of them as safe to love. But it doesn't stop you from wanting them.

Little mouse," a voice said through the keyhole. "Don't you know the more you wriggle, the greater the cat's delight?

Someone could cut through the mess in our house and look at it like one might look at rings on a tree or layers of sediment. They'd find the black-and-white hairs of a dog we had when I was six, the acid-washed jeans my mother once wore, the seven blood-soaked pillowcases from the time I skinned my knee. All our family secrets rest in endless piles.

Downstairs, Grandad's warning Barron about something. His voice swells, and I catch the words, "In my day we were feared. Now we're just afraid.

It’s hard to come up with a scheme to thwart some other scheme you don’t even know about.

I'm the best kind of thief, the kind that leaves behind items equal in value to those he's stolen.