Winter Garden

by Kristin Hannah

Sometimes a thing was its truest self when the colors were stripped away.

Words were like pennies, fallen into corners and down the cracks, not worth the effort of collecting.

One day at a time; that was how you made it through.

There were places in every home that belonged to a single individual. No matter how many family members might use a space, or come and go through it, there was one in the group to whom it truly belonged.

Every choice changed the road you were on and it was too easy to end up going in the wrong direction.

They would always be a family, but if she’d learned anything in the past few weeks it was that a family wasn’t a static thing. There were always changes going on. Like with continents, sometimes the changes were invisible and underground, and sometimes they were explosive and deadly. The trick was to keep your balance. You couldn’t control the direction of your family any more than you could stop the continental shelf from breaking apart. All you could do was hold on for the ride.

Nina stared at the woman who had raised her and saw the truth at last. Her mother was a lioness. A warrior. A woman who’d chosen a life of hell for herself because she wanted to give up and didn’t know how.

If there was one thing she’d learned in all of this, it was that life—and love—can be gone any second. When you had it, you needed to hang on with all your strength and savor every second.