The Last Train to Key West (The Perez Family, #3)

by Chanel Cleeton

The helplessness is the hardest part, that sensation of being trapped by life, by circumstance and all the things out of your control wearing you down day after day, month after month, year after year. It’s enough to make you want to run away and never look back. It’s enough to make you rail against the world. I see it in her eyes, a spark, a flash of anger, hot and sharp, transforming her into someone else entirely. Someone I recognize. I smile back at her.

After all, what more do we want than for someone to see us as we are, to acknowledge our pain, and to offer a moment of relief?

What will I tell my child when it asks how I could have left? What would I have told my child if it asked how I could have stayed?

There’s so much broken around us; maybe all we can do is try to fix each other, do what we can to preserve these precious moments in a world where there is so much sadness and loss.