“You know,” Alice says, “people say dreadful things sometimes. They don’t know they’re dreadful. They say them without thinking. They say them without considering who they might be talking to. I have heard, countless times, that a woman doesn’t know love until she has a child. There are a great many women who don’t really know love, even when they have children. Amelia, I have known love. Great and deep and terrible. Beautiful, destructive. Self-sacrificial. Selfish, sometimes. I’ve lived so many lives all in one. It is a life’s work to look back on all your years and see that what you are,
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