I refuse to let the past find me here.

Because there's nothing wrong with you... that can't be fixed.

It's only his thumb brushing slowly across the lower edge of my lip, but it's as if time slows and the sweep of that thumb below my mouth takes forever. It is no spell that I know of, but it holds such magic, I can scarcely breath. He pulls his hand away fast, aware of what he's done. But his touch lingers.

They kept the lie going, and the people loved it.

Just once I’d like to meet a fella who isn’t a phony. Somebody who doesn’t wanna buy me a fur so he can show me off to his boys.

Evie hadn’t always felt that way. For a year after James had died, she’d cupped his half-dollar pendant between her pressed palms and prayed fervently for a miracle, for a telegram that would say GOOD NEWS! IT WAS A TERRIBLE MISTAKE, AND PRIVATE JAMES XAVIER O’NEILL HAS BEEN FOUND, SAFE, IN A FARMHOUSE IN FRANCE. But no such telegram ever arrived, and whatever possible faith might have bloomed in Evie withered and died. Now she saw it as just another advertisement for a life that belonged to a previous generation and held no meaning for hers.

The line between faith and fanaticism is a constantly shifting one,” Dr. Poblocki said. “When does belief become justification? When does right become rationale and crusade become crime?