The Wish Collector

by Mia Sheridan

“I believe everyone deserves grace, Clara. What you will have to ask yourself is if you should offer that grace from near or from afar. Offering grace does not mean offering your heart. That, my darlin’, must be protected at all cost.”

“We must never choose safety over right. Safety is the blanket under which cowards sleep. Safety smothers hope and extinguishes all fight.”

“Maybe it’s not about me, Myrtle. This town, hell, the world at large, isn’t going to be accepting of me just because I decide to walk out into it.” “It’s always about you, Jonah. It’s always been about you. The world will react the way the world will react. That’s not your business. You have faith in your own worth and the world won’t matter.” “I don’t think I know how to do that,” he murmured. “You do, sweet boy. And if you need a hand to hold, you got old Myrtle. I might walk you right into a tree before I walk you into the world, but I’ll be there by your side.”

He’d run this path for so many years with the same syllables chanting through his mind, but now . . . now there was suddenly room for . . . more. There was suddenly so much space, and he wasn’t sure what to do with it.

“You did it because those scars you’re so ashamed of caused you to suffer, yes, but also to learn and to grow and to use your pain for good.”

she could see in his posture, in the way his shoulders hunched, that he was suffering too. But if he wouldn’t do anything about it, she couldn’t force him to. She could only love him. And offer him grace. But this time, from afar.