Then I'd crawl back into bed, smelling her all around me, and tell myself that next time, I would lock that window. But I never did.

Sitting there with them, it was almost hard to remember when I first came to Perkins, so determined to remember to be a one-woman operation to the end. But that was the thing about taking help and giving it, or so I was learning; there was no such thing as really getting even. Instead, this connection, once opened, remained ongoing over time.

Everyone has their weak spot. The one thing that, despite your best efforts, will always bring you to your knees, regardless of how strong you are otherwise.

The mistakes you make now count. Not for everything, and not forever. But they do matter, and they shape you.

Welcome to adulthood," she said. "It sucks as much as high school.

When you've never gotten love from someone, you don't know what it might look like if it ever does appear. You look for it in everything: any bright light overhead could be a star.

The worst part was that I had things I wanted to tell my mother, too many to count, but none of them would go down so easy. She'd been through too much, between my siters-I could not add to the weight. So instead, I did my best to balance it out, bit by bit, word by word, story by story, even if none of them were true.