I'd been through so much, falling short again and again, and only recently had found a place where who I was, right now, was enough.

It's not forever', she'd said, but to my mother, it might as well have been. She had make her choice, and this was it, where she felt safe, in a world she could, for the most part, control.

I'd chosen instead to just change my route, go miles out of the way, as if avoiding it would make it go away once and for all.

But something, somehow, had made all these paths converge. You couldn't find it on a checklist, or work it into the equation. It just happened.

And so really, you have given me no choice but to take you shopping by force.” She sighed, then reached up, dropping her sunglasses down from their perch on her head to cover her eyes. “Do you even realize how happy the average teenage girl would be in your shoes? I have a credit card. We’re at the mall. I want to buy you things. It’s like adolescent nirvana.” - Cora

The past did affect the present and the future, in ways you could see and a million ones you couldn't. Time wasn't a thing you could divide easily; there was no defined middle or beginning or end. I could pretend to leave the past behind, but it would not leave me.

Because this is what happens when you try to run from the past. It just doesn’t catch up, it overtakes … blotting out the future.