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Kindle Notes & Highlights
“Daniel was driving his boat. The steering wheel got jammed or something and they hit a rock by the lighthouse. I guess he flipped overboard.”
Maggie and her girlfriend, Isabel, crossed the border into New York. The drive from southern Vermont, where they taught at a boarding school, to Port Haven on the North Fork of Long Island,
“And your dad?” “Robert.” Maggie tapped the steering wheel. “For him, I’d say obliging.” Isabel laughed. “In a house full of women, what other choice did he have?” “Well, it wasn’t always that way, before my brother…”
For the rest of the summer, Maggie and Isabel ran together every morning, shared most meals, and drank whiskey on the communal porch at night, their thighs touching beneath the flannel throw they’d share when the temperature dropped after sunset.
Still, it felt safer to keep some distance. Maggie’s crushes before had been consumed with urgency and angst.
Whereas Augustus was blessed with an easygoing temperament, Poppy was most like her. Not just hungry but bottomless.
It wasn’t just the money. It was how Alice would judge her for bringing a nanny home.
If only he had the same level of enthusiasm for the rest of the house as he did for the garage.
We don’t see things as they are,’” she said. “‘We see them as we are.’”
Her mother had always said you’re only as happy as your least happy child, but was that really true? What happens when there’s no possibility of that child ever being happy again?
