The Book of Flora (The Road to Nowhere, #3)

by Meg Elison

Motherhood lives forever on the doorstep of death.

I think about the lost ones who are still out there, each thinking that they are the only one of their kind.

We have to make this choice every day, because that’s how we decide who we are. Because the choosing never ends. The work never ends. I know that now. Nothing is settled and nothing is won.

“Trouble sleeping?” “Trouble living.” “Doing okay?” “Still here. Still here.”

“That’s the stuff,” Alice whispered. “I’m brewing poison and death. That’s the smell of the end of a pregnancy.” Flora sniffed the air. It was a little acid, like sour fruit. A little rotten, like wet fallen leaves. And yes, underneath it, there was the metallic smell of blood, the spill when it was all over and hope was gone.

What do you call it when you wish you could take someone else’s problem? Not only to help them, but to help yourself. I don’t think there is such a word.

I remember hazily from childhood that Archie took me into a village once where they thought children came from the moon. People will believe anything if you don’t teach them how to reason for themselves.

My prize for fighting, for not dying all those times, is a broken heart and very dry skin.