Linden just wants to protect her, is what I want to say. She's all he has. I left him. I'm at arms reach, but I've left him.

None of the wives mention the security guards by the door, who will probably tackle us to the ground if we try to leave without our husbands.

I wish I had a memory of that first violent shove, the shock of cold air, the sting of oxygen into new lungs. Everyone should remember being born. It doesn't seem fair that we only remember dying.

Rhine. The river that, somewhere out there, has broken free.

Ah, love. That’s what the world has lost. There’s no more love, only the illusion of it.

But there’s no such thing as free. There are only different and more horrible ways to be enslaved.

I want to make the world into something better so that he can be okay.