Adults weren’t supposed to understand their children and you were doing something wrong if they did.

She doesn't know I cry for the changing times. That just as I reread favourite books, some small part of me hoping for a different ending, I find myself hoping against hope that the war will never come. That this time, somehow, it will leave us be.

So much in life came down to timing.

Reluctance to begin is quick to befriend procrastination. . . .

To abandon a child, she had once said to someone, when she thought Cassandra couldn't hear, was an act so cold, so careless, it refused forgiveness.

But history is a faithless teller whose cruel recourse to hindsight makes fools of its actors.

Cassandra's grandmother smiled then, only it wasn't a happy smile. Cassandra thought she knew how it felt to smile like that. She often did so herself when her mother promised her something she really wanted but knew might not happen.