The Lovely Bones

by Alice Sebold

Because horror on Earth is real and it is every day. It is like a flower or like the sun; it cannot be contained.

How could they both work to support their families and watch their children to make sure they were safe? As a group they would learn it was impossible, no matter how many rules they laid down. What had happened to me could happen to anyone.

These were the lovely bones that had grown around my absence: the connections—sometimes tenuous, sometimes made at great cost, but often magnificent—that happened after I was gone.