The Great Alone

by Kristin Hannah

It’s like his back is broken, Mama had said, and you don’t stop loving a person when they’re hurt. You get stronger so they can lean on you. He needs me. Us.

He taught her something new about friendship: it picked right back up where you’d left off, as if you hadn’t been apart at all.

She found herself secretly mapping his face, memorizing every ridge and hollow and valley, as if she were an explorer and he her discovery.

And the books! She’d never seen so many. They whispered to her of unexplored worlds and unmet friends and she realized that she wasn’t alone in this new world. Her friends were here, spine out, waiting for her as they always had.

You are everything I did right. And I want you to know I would do it all again, every wonderful terrible second of it. I would do years and years of it again for one minute with you.