Dear Hanna
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Read between August 25 - September 1, 2024
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Now she understood all the mistakes she’d made, but at seven she’d been naive and impatient. Now she knew that if you were going to kill someone, you needed to be both more competent and more subtle about it.
Ali R
Wow still no remorse
33%
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That’s what he believed, that in their frustration to parent her, they’d sent her off to a better school. He didn’t know it had been a residential treatment center for severely mentally ill children.
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Hanna believed that as an adult she was in full control of the parts of herself that were dangerous—but what if she was wrong?
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No, the person Hanna needed to get the upper hand over was next to her on the bed.
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She was afraid of medically trained men and women in white coats. Skilled practitioners of torture with lying smiles and sterilized tools.
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By the time she was a tween, she’d graduated to being reticent (though, when no one was eavesdropping, she spoke openly with Goose). Speaking in a broadly normal fashion came a couple of years later,
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Sometimes Hanna thought she’d be a very different person if she lived in a dimension where people communicated in imagery.
35%
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a young princess and a beautiful witch—
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Isn’t that weird that “genius” and “bad behavior” went together like peanut butter and jelly?
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it’s not that I desire to be the worst person, but it sounds so freeing, so tantalizing, to do whatever you want. No rules. No repercussions.
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You can be a genius without molesting anyone. You’re better than that. You don’t need to saddle your talent and ambition to wickedness.
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I love her more than anything and I despise her for being such a wicked little monster. She keeps me company and she makes me feel alone. She isn’t an “alternate” personality but her own separate being . . . who happens to live inside me. I am her house. She is the inhabitant of my body, the house.
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I want to know her better, and I want to know her less. I want her at my side, and I want her to disappear.
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For a moment she pondered how Jo and Goose would get along. Joelle was only a little older—but Goose was probably several degrees more demented.
Ali R
Yea I'm starting to see that
39%
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“I guess . . . after your miscarriage, it didn’t seem right to . . . to lose another baby, intentionally.”
40%
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Rachel wouldn’t have pushed this hard for her to end the pregnancy.” “Are you sure?” “Yes, Hanna. Unlike you, I actually knew my first wife.”
Ali R
OUCH but true
40%
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she didn’t want to become irrelevant in the household once Joelle emerged as her most “reasonable, loving” self. Hanna couldn’t compete with reasonable and loving.
40%
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Boyd. What a stupid name. If he’d been born a girl, would his parents, Ed and Ashley, have named her Girld?
Ali R
It's weird cuz his first name sounds like a last name.
43%
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She almost wanted to lay out for Joelle why she’d chosen Jacob—that it was a plan, not an accident. She’d chosen someone with a background similar to her own. A man with a small household, who wasn’t too family oriented. Financially stable, artistically compatible, with reliably normal behavior.
45%
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But the most important lesson she’d learned was that she didn’t want to get locked up again.
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she had no need to lie to herself; she hoped to be less obvious than Ashley, but no less controlling.
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And most of all she didn’t like that within Boyd was a killer.
Ali R
Wooowww! So he hunts and it automatically means he has some kind of blood thirsty trait? And she wants to talk about murdering . She attempted to murder her mom several times before she was the age of eight . Like c’mom . I doubt Boyd could match her level of psycho lol.
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No one is who they say they are. Words lie.
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“The killing isn’t the hard part, contrary to your past experiences,” he said. “It’s when the body is found that people get in trouble. So. Much. Evidence.”
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After Jo left, Jacob and I joked, in a cringe kind of way, that at least we didn’t have to worry about her losing her virginity at the after prom.
48%
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For fuck’s sake . . . a bit off the rails? Sister dear, you sound like a train that jumped the tracks and is barreling down a mountainside toward a swiftly churning river.
Ali R
Lmao
49%
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This was how a mature adult would handle the matter—well, a mature adult bent on anonymous destruction.
50%
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Jacob glared at her. “I would’ve liked to know this before. That your boyfriend has a gun.”
Ali R
I think your non-gun-owning psycho wife is more likely to kill someone, dude. But sure , whatever
51%
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It rattled her, this possibility that Jacob had seen and captured an element of her Other self.
53%
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“I don’t want to take up too much of your time—but maybe a soda, something diet?” “Sure.” Hanna marched off to the kitchen, muttering inaudibly. “Presumptuous bitch.”
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Hanna wished her husband didn’t look so nervous. It struck her that she could jump in and speak for him—but then there’d be a weird tableau of taciturn males letting their more assertive women do the talking.
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“There’s no reason you or your daughter have to be around our guns. I’ll let Ed know not to invite you hunting.” Ashley gave him a twisted smile, halfway polite and halfway an accusation: You’re not our kind.
Ali R
Lmao honestly i'm on her side here. Jacob's overreacting and needs to mind his business
54%
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None of us, except Hanna, has even suggested that maybe they shouldn’t have this baby. But more and more I’m thinking about . . . Pregnancy is dangerous. More dangerous for someone who’s only sixteen. And what if there was a choice to make—between Jo or the baby? And there’s no question. I would choose Joelle.”
Ali R
Are you freaking kididng me? So because you’re not okay with killing and guns in he bfs' household , you want to kill your daughter’s baby? What happened to “her choice?” That’s not what she wants! How hypocritical can you get !?
55%
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“Wait—wait a minute.” Ashley struggled to fish words out of her swamp of disgust. “You think there’s something wrong about hunting animals. For food. But you’re okay with your daughter killing her baby—my son’s baby?”
Ali R
Yesss! Thank you!! The hypocrisy !
55%
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“You take all of life’s most natural things and turn them into something horrible. We’re real people. We live real, down-to-earth lives. Maybe that’s not what you want, for yourselves or your kids. But we’re not ashamed.
Ali R
Are we supposed to dislike her character? Because honestly I'm starting to like her. She's the only one who seems to have some sense.
56%
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You think you’re better than we are. I’d tell you to check your privilege at the door—but this is your house.”
57%
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My worries are quite a bit more existential and dire: I’m not sure I’ll be able to survive with a baby in my house.
57%
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Which leaves me with one question—the thing I need your help with: How shall I kill her? It is a last resort—an option I thought I could avoid. But I must be strong for my family. It’s a decision I’m making with love.
58%
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It seems more than a little unfair to me that my youthful actions should be held against me indefinitely, especially since I was released from Marshes as a functioning member of society.
Ali R
Lmao nah it's perfectly fair considering you're still unhinged enough to plan a murder with one.
59%
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If nothing else, she nurtured your considerable creativity and artistic skills.
59%
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yes, of course, I’ve continued to ponder the fine art of murder. Where for you it’s an obsession, for me it’s a fun distraction.
Ali R
I swear, this kid is just as F-ed up in the head as his sister
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“Sometimes I forget how young you are.”
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he was probably concerned that brother-in-law Chuck owned an arsenal—and that one of the kids would pull out a gun and playfully bang-bang Joelle in the heart.
Ali R
LOL My goodness, these stereotypes are hilarious! just because they're gun owner doesn't mean they don't know how to responsibly store their weapons
65%
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“Parents, even imperfect ones, don’t hate their kids.” I might have given them good reason.
66%
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To keep things running smoothly, Hanna intended to kill her with kindness.
Ali R
Opposed to the gun she considering killing her with before? LMAO sorry I couldn't help it.
68%
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They couldn’t believe that Hanna’s love for him was genuine. They doubted her capacity to love at all.
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Mommy didn’t care what the therapists said; she always gave Hanna the skeptical eye, not trusting that she’d been cured of her capacity to commit bodily harm. In a way, Mommy always knew her a bit too well.
69%
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Porky trotted from person to person, begging—but every time he neared Hanna, he bared his teeth and growled at her.
Ali R
That dog sees her for who she is.
69%
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Had she actually liked Goose when he was little? Or had she reframed the memories based on her love for him now?
71%
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“Why would she think I wouldn’t want to have a baby shower for her?” “I don’t know—maybe because you made it clear you thought she should have an abortion?” Ashley’s tone was icy and mocking.
Ali R
LMAO well she aint wrong. It reminds me of the "if you can't beat em, join em" sentiment. If you can't abort it, throw it a baby shower. SMH