Juniper Bean Resorts to Murder (Happily Ever Homicide, #1)

by Gracie Ruth Mitchell

think we all think about weird things sometimes, but we’re never sure exactly how weird other people are, and we don’t want to give ourselves away for fear that we’re the strangest one in the room.

I’m not sure anyone can be judged by what they say to their deceased. We all keep the dead in our own ways; they never leave us. Not really. The parting of life from a body can never erase memories or teachings or likenesses.

don’t know how it’s possible to miss someone and resent them, to love them and hate them all at the same time. To be glad they’re gone and simultaneously wish they were still here. The human brain is little more than three pounds and can be held in two cupped hands, but the emotions it produces are so big, so nebulous and tangled. And sometimes those tangled emotions feel like thorny brambles that I’ve stumbled and fallen into, scraped knees and scarred palms that constantly remind me of the past. How much of that past do I keep? How much do I let go? And how do I separate the two?

We keep our dead, and our dead keep us. We remember them, and they in turn find us at the moments we don’t expect—a flash of memory on a summer’s day, a snippet of an old favorite song, a long-lost photograph unearthed.

“But I’m not the kind of person who thinks romance is trash. I think there’s a place for well-written romance. No one said all books have to be deep and moving all the time.” She shakes her head. “That’s true, but look—you’re already assuming that romance isn’t deep or moving.”

Until I came along, the plus-one she never meant to bring. But I’m here. I’m alive. And I’m going to do great things in this life of mine. I don’t need to leave a huge legacy; I don’t need to change the world. But I’m going to make my little corner of life a really excellent corner.

don’t know if the carpet was blue because the author wanted to portray something sad. But if that’s how it seems to you, what can you take away from that? If you’re finding hints of sadness in everything you read, what can that tell you about yourself at this point in time? Those are the lessons that are going to help you in your day-to-day life anyway. In fifty years you’re not going to need to know about symbolism in classical literature. But you’re definitely going to need lots of tools for figuring yourself out, for deciphering your own emotions and understanding your own mind.

“You know how some people just require a lot of energy? Matilda is sort of like that. And she cares about a lot of things that I don’t care about, but I always feel like I have to pretend. It involves a lot of nodding and smiling.”

she’s done something incredible with it. She sees her shadows; she weaves them through her fingers. She knows their value. But she doesn’t drown in them. She remains sunshine—not soft, gentle sunshine, but abrasive sunshine with sharp edges. That’s how she channels her demons, both in her poetry and her life: she uses them to make her light shine brighter in contrast.

Any time your presence causes people to change, you’re making history. Sometimes small history, sometimes grand—always worth paying attention to.

Then I sat in my room and cried, wondering why someone who obviously loved me so much could be such a terrible mother.

So I will be a keeper of this truth: that thirty years ago, a young woman suffered immensely from one of the most terrible things that can happen, and as far as I know, she never told anybody.

Because maybe, if I can figure the scary things out, they won’t be so scary anymore.

The truth hits me then as his eyes blaze down at me: this man loved my mother. It’s plain as day. Did he love the woman she became, sad and broken, whose best still wasn’t enough? Because that’s the unfortunate truth about my mother: she tried. I really think she did. And she loved me. But love and trying hard were not enough. Sometimes those things are not enough. And is love more than the sum of its parts? If you lose all the parts of yourself that someone fell in love with, will they still love you? Is there a love that says simply I love you because you exist?

“Do you believe in fate?” I say. I don’t know where the words come from. “I believe in people,” she

You’re allowed to feel angry, my therapist has told me time and time again. You’re allowed to feel compassion for your mother while also taking issue with how she treated you. You’re allowed to love someone while also being glad they’re no longer part of your life. You can understand why someone treats you badly while also refusing to allow them to treat you that way. Those things are okay. I believe her. I really do. But understanding something with my brain and understanding it with my heart are two different things, and I still have a ways to go on that front.

cry for myself, because I’m sad, and because I’m learning that I’m allowed to be unhappy.