I don't think we get a choice in who we fall for," Ian whispers. "I think we just do.

I realized it was like looking into the sun—you shouldn't do it, because you'd turn your face away and be blind to everything else.

Grief is a curious thing, when it happens unexpectedly. It is a Band-Aid being ripped away, taking the top layer off a family. And the underbelly of a household is never pretty, ours no exception. There were times I stayed in my room for days on end with headphones on, if only so that I would not have to listen to my mother cry. There were the weeks that my father worked round-the-clock shifts, so that he wouldn't have to come home to a house that felt too big for us.

I knew her well enough to understand that when Delia pushed you away, it was her way of making sure she didn't get shoved first.

You know what the difference is between a dream and a goal?... A plan.

When you're pregnant, you can think of nothing but having your own body to yourself again; yet after giving birth you realize that the biggest part of you is now somehow external, subject to all sorts of dangers and disappearance, so you spend the rest of your life trying to figure out how to keep her close enough for comfort. That's the strange thing about being a mother: Until you have a baby, you don't even realize how much you were missing one.

In this new place we've found, sometimes there aren't words, because the truth can be even more difficult than the lies.