There was no black or white. Someone who had been good her entire life could, in fact, do something evil. People were just as capable of committing murder, under the right circumstances, as any monster.

Maybe I was naïve to think that silence was implicit complacence, instead of a festering question. Maybe I was silly to believe that friends owed each other anything.

I smiled at him as best I could and pushed the paper across the table before he could change his mind. Because Henry DeVille was correct - there was an ingredient in my baking more concenctrated than any extract, more pungent than any spice; an ingredient that everyone would recognize and no one was able to name: it was regret, and it rose when one least expected.

Clearly God was in some kind of mood on my birthday.

I've been an idiot to think that real life could have a happy ending

We believe what we want to, what we need to. The corollary is that we choose not to see what we'd rather pretend doesn't exist.

Her mouth is always on the verge of a smile. It makes her look like there's always something amazing she needs to tell me, even when it's just hello.