Where the Crawdads Sing

by Delia Owens

imagination grows in the loneliest of soils,

Until at last, at some unclaimed moment, the heart-pain seeped away like water into sand. Still there, but deep.

so she dropped the memory altogether.

The other words Tate didn’t say were his feelings for her that seemed tangled up between the sweet love for a lost sister and the fiery love for a girl. He couldn’t come close to sorting it out himself, but he’d never been hit by a stronger wave. A power of emotions as painful as pleasurable.

Of all the ragged loves she’d known from wayward family, none had felt like this.

And for the first time in her life, her heart was full.

She’d always found the muscle and heart to pull herself from the mire, to take the next step, no matter how shaky. But where had all that grit brought her? She drifted in and out of thin sleep.

Life had made her an expert at mashing feelings into a storable size.

Why should the injured, the still bleeding, bear the onus of forgiveness?