He looks at me, and I don't know what he sees. I used to think it was Rose. But she's not here with us now, in this room. It's just him and me, and the books. I feel like our lives are in those books. I feel like all the words on the pages are for us.

You’re insane, you know that?” he says. “It’s the only thing keeping me afloat,” I say.

I should not have loved my daughter as I did. Not in this world in which nothing lives for long. You children are flies. You are roses. You multiply and die.

I wonder what it’s like for her, looking so much like a dead girl.

She's been conned, ruined, left for dead, and she's not going to forgive any of it. She will soldier on, if only out of spite.

Fate,' I said, 'Is a theif.

Kettle thingies. Yum.