Promises were a lot like impressions. The second one didn't count for much.

Before this trip and all that she'd learned about the three of them, she would have gotten angry or changed the subject. Anything to obscure the pain she felt. Now she knew better. You carried your pain with you in life. There was no outrunning it.

Alice started to cry. It came with no sound, no shuddering, no childlike hysterics, just a soul-deep release that turned into moisture and dripped down her puffy pink cheeks. She touched her tears, frowning. Then she looked up at Julia and whimpered two words before she fell asleep. ‘Real hurts.’

It had been years since she question his fidelity, but he'd stepped on to the old fame track again, and that was where the road had taken them before. Infidelity could be forgiven, but forgetting it was impossible. Strangely, that wasn't what bothered her the most. What bothered her was that she didn't really care.

I prefer to scare myself in the ordinary ways, Daddy. Like letting my children cross the country for college. Why bungee jump when you can put a kindergartener on a school bus? Now, that's real terror.

We can't live other people's lives for them. Even if we love them.

At one point, she'd wanted to hurl the whole breakfast at the wall. And then she'd remember why it was that men had temper tantrums and women didn't: cleanup.