Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: A Novel

by Jessica Guerrieri

“When you like someone, you can just feel it. Inside—it makes you feel warm and happy.”

“I swear if men got pregnant, it would be priority one to end symptoms. That and abortions would be available at ATMs,”

The time I’m allotted to act in one role is finite. Wife, then mother—without any guaranteed scraps left over for myself. The need to be everything to everyone is relentless.

Funny how someone could be the seed that grew the tree when I had no intention of putting down roots.

I know a little something about being the keeper of secrets. That even the knowledge of their very existence can be enough to haunt a woman forever.

“There will be times when it feels like the . . . rainures—the grooves—in the road have been put in place because you were meant to follow them. Everyone around you will fall into place since they’ve just come to accept that they are ordinary.”

They called me back about twenty minutes after I checked in, just long enough to make me question every decision I’d ever made in my entire life.

a little sanctuary I made for myself on the very first night we moved in. I don’t ever allow the kids in here. It’s a place where I can return to being a woman and not a mother.

After politely inquiring further, we grow impatient, wondering how much longer we should stand there miming concern over other people’s hurt when we are already buried in our own.

“Sometimes I worry about getting lost inside the shadow you cast,”

“The thing about shadows, I’ve learned, is that sometimes someone just needs another person to help them find their light.”

“Not everyone had what you had growing up. We can’t all be happy, well-adjusted breeders—then the world would be void of any art,”

“All of your good parts, all that magic that exists within you, the light that radiates and draws everyone in—the things we all love, all of us: me, the kids, Amy, my mom—when you drink, it disappears.”

I want to survive, while all of me knows that Isla never truly wanted to die. She just no longer knew how to live.