More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
And no matter how desperate or dire, never pray to the gods that answer after dark.
Seven freckles. One for every love she’d have, that’s what Estele had said, when the girl was still young. One for every life she’d lead. One for every god watching over her.
She lies there, perfectly still, tries to hold time like a breath in her chest; as if she can keep the clock from ticking forward, keep the boy beside her from waking, keep the memory of their night alive through sheer force of will.
Ireland <3
This is the grass between the nettles. A safe place to step. She can’t leave her own mark, but if she’s careful, she can give the mark to someone else.
That date a death, and a rebirth, rolled into one.
Divorce
“The old gods may be great, but they are neither kind nor merciful. They are fickle, unsteady as moonlight on water, or shadows in a storm. If you insist on calling them, take heed: be careful what you ask for, be willing to pay the price.” She leans over Adeline, casting her in shadow. “And no matter how desperate or dire, never pray to the gods that answer after dark.”
Blink, and the years fall away like leaves.
They sure do.
everyone speaks of her as if she is a summer bloom, something to be plucked, and propped within a vase, intended only to flower and then to rot.
No, Adeline has decided she would rather be a tree, like Estele. If she must grow roots, she would rather be left to flourish wild instead of pruned, would rather stand alone, allowed to grow beneath the open sky. Better that than firewood, cut down just to burn in someone else’s hearth.
And when she cannot sleep, she thinks of him. Not the angle of his cheek, or the shade of green she has conjured for his eyes, but his voice, his touch. She lies awake and imagines him beside her, his long fingers tracing absent patterns on her skin. As he does, he tells her stories.
E <3
There is a rhythm to moving through the world alone. You discover what you can and cannot live without, the simple necessities and small joys that define a life.
Truth
Books, she has found, are a way to live a thousand lives—or to find strength in a very long one.
grow wild and deep, belong to no one but the ground beneath her feet, and the sky above,
“I do not want to belong to anyone but myself. I want to be free. Free to live, and to find my own way, to love, or to be alone, but at least it is my choice, and I am so tired of not having choices, so scared of the years rushing past beneath my feet. I do not want to die as I’ve lived, which is no life at all.
“You ask for time without limit. You want freedom without rule. You want to be untethered. You want to live exactly as you please.”
Funny, how some people take an age to warm, and others simply walk into every room as if it’s home.
Déjà vu. Déjà su. Déjà vécu. Already seen. Already known. Already lived.
She stands there until she realizes she is waiting. Waiting for someone to help. To come and fix the mess she’s in. But no one is coming. No one remembers, and if she resigns herself to waiting, she will wait forever.
Sam lives and loves with such an open heart, shares the kind of warmth most reserve only for the closest people in their lives. Reasons come second to needs.
She could fall into this moment forever, but she knows there is no future in it.
“I remember you.” Three words, large enough to tip the world. I remember you.
Be still, my heart <3
“I see someone who cares,” she says slowly. “Perhaps too much. Who feels too much. I see someone lost, and hungry. The kind of person who feels like they’re wasting away in a world full of food, because they can’t decide what they want.”
Whatever this is, a blip, a mistake, a beautiful dream, or a piece of impossible luck, she’s afraid to let it go. Let him go.
E <3
He studies her, squinting at her as if she’s a book, not a person; something to be read. She stares back at him like he’s a ghost. A miracle. An impossible thing.
E <3
“Sorry,” he says again, “I forgot myself.” And then, a mischievous grin. “It seems you have, too.” “Not at all,” she says, fingers drifting toward the short blade she’s kept inside her basket. “I have misplaced myself on purpose.”
Aut viam invenium aut faciam, and so on.” She does not know Latin yet, and he does not offer a translation, but a decade from now, she will look up the words, and learn their meaning. To find a way, or make your own.
“Small places make for small lives. And some people are fine with that. They like knowing where to put their feet. But if you only walk in other people’s steps, you cannot make your own way. You cannot leave a mark.”
“I think there are many ways to matter.”
She is used to having all of the attention, or none of it. To being the brief but sunlit center of a stranger’s world, or a shadow at its edges.
Same
“I understand,” says Addie. “The nicest days are always the ones we don’t plan.”
she wishes she could have stayed, wishes that when Henry had said Wait, she had said, Come with me, but she knows it is not fair to make him choose. He is full of roots, while she has only branches.
Live long enough, and people open up like books. Robbie is a romance novel. A tale of broken hearts. He is so clearly lovesick.
There is the awkward silence that fills the space between people who don’t know what to say. And the taut silence that falls over those who do, but don’t know where or how to start.
I remember seeing that picture and realizing that photographs weren’t real. There’s no context, just the illusion that you’re showing a snapshot of a life, but life isn’t snapshots, it’s fluid. So photos are like fictions.
They fit together with the familiar comfort of a well-worn coat.
It feels good to be the user instead of the used. To be the one who gets instead of the one who loses.
And maybe it wasn’t a perfect fit, but nothing is.
A presence, a solid weight, the first steady pull he’s felt in months. The strength of someone else’s gravity.
E <3
Addie cannot help herself. She shakes her head, bemused. “Some nights, you love to see me suffer, so that I will yield. Others, you seem intent to spare me from it. I do wish you’d make up your mind.” A shadow sweeps across his face. “Trust me, my dear, you don’t.” A small shiver runs through her as he lifts the wineglass to his lips. “Do not mistake this—any of it—for kindness, Adeline.” His eyes go bright with mischief. “I simply want to be the one who breaks you.”
I’m sorry you disapprove. But this is who I am. This is what works for me.” Henry shakes his head. “But it won’t work for us
:'( </3
There is a freedom, after all, in being forgotten.
Memories are stiff, but thoughts are freer things. They throw out roots, they spread and tangle, and come untethered from their source. They are clever, and stubborn, and perhaps—perhaps—they are in reach.
Here is a new kind of silence, rarer than the rest. The easy quiet of familiar spaces, of places that fill simply because you are not alone within them.
Time spent with E <3
They’ve been lucky, so lucky, but the trouble with luck is that it always ends. And perhaps it is just the nervous tapping of Henry’s fingers on the journal. And perhaps it is just the moonless sky. And perhaps it is just that happiness is frightening.
Here is a life in still frames. Moments like Polaroids. Like paintings. Like flowers pressed between the pages of a book. Perfectly preserved.
Life with E <3
“Fräulein,”
Lookup
happiness is brief, and history is lasting, and in the end,” he says, “everyone wants to be remembered.”
And this is the perfect kind of silence. Easy, and empty.
A boy is sick of his broken heart.
Same Henry, same.
It is just a storm, he tells himself, but he is tired of looking for shelter. It is just a storm, but there is always another waiting in its wake.
Relateable
