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he’d been at the mercy of a powerful desire: the desire to blow everything up.
What if I put the tip of my finger against that fragile ornament my mother said not to touch, and not only do I touch, I push? What if, halfway through a boring geography lesson, I stand up and walk out without saying a single word? What if I jump off that bridge with the sign that says NO JUMPING? Take that pill? Go for that impossible shot? What if I pick up a girl at a city bar while my wife is going through IVF to have a baby we both supposedly want? It was like an invisible force took hold of him: Do it, do it, do it.
self-sabotage,
She turned up the volume on Taylor Swift to inspire her. She loved Taylor Swift. Grant said she couldn’t possibly love Taylor because she wasn’t
When she’d looked over at the Delaneys’ house that night she had been reassured to see the familiar figures of Logan and Brooke under the porch light at their parents’ front door. She’d
The past could look very different depending on where you stood to look at it.
as fast and simple as extinguishing the flame of a candle between her thumb and her finger: a fierce tingle of pain instantly gone.
They did not look like people expecting good news anytime soon. They looked like people waiting for a funeral to start.
carrot cake
paperwork.”
“It was just an ordinary argument between a husband and wife.”
just drove.
never said that. I do remember what we argued about, but it’s personal. My marriage is private. It’s none of your business. It’s not relevant to your investigation.”
“I’m hearing that your wife may not have been faithful. I’m hearing that she betrayed you professionally.”
She was conducting an experiment. She’d stopped calling her children.
specialized in the tiny razor-sharp dig wrapped in a soft compliment, so you didn’t notice the blood until afterward.
And then she’d get back in the car with a miserable daughter beside her, and the girls misinterpreted her frustration at her own impotence as anger at them, and they blamed themselves just as she blamed herself.
You can still fight back from match point down.
If you want to overcome a losing streak, you reevaluate your game. She was a fighter.
You can choose the right shot, you can have a good swing and good technique, you can do everything right, and it can still go wrong. No player, no matter how good, makes one hundred percent of their shots.
Stan towered over her, and she was not frightened, she was exhilarated, because the fractured shell of their marriage was finally cracking open like a coconut. She wanted it all out. She wanted to finally say everything she’d never said.
“What about my profession?”
“I gave up my tennis for you,”
She’d never wanted his gratitude, just his acknowledgment.
She’d never resented it at the time, but now she resented every moment, every single bloody lamb chop.
But that was the point. He didn’t have to ask her.
“If you wanted it, you would have done it,” he said.
“If you’d really wanted it, nothing would have stopped you.”
She couldn’t speak. Did he not see that the only thing that could have stopped her was her love for him?
“You were never going to rank in the top ten, Joy. If I thought you could have got there, I wou...
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her sacrifice had been his considered decision.
She froze because his face was no longer his. It was an unfamiliar mask of ugly rage.
bet you were a cheerleader,” her new husband had said when they first met, and of course that wasn’t a thing in Australia
“Well, as it happens, this girl’s name was Savannah Delaney.”
She was so fragile right now, like a delicate glass version of herself.
Amazing to think something beautiful could lie beneath the ugliness and all you had to do was peel it away.
circuit breaker.
People heard birdsong in places where they had once only heard traffic. Skies cleared.
Once you’ve hit a ball there’s no point watching to see where it’s going. You can’t change its flight path now. You have to think about your next move. Not
Time slowed and softened like a long hot summer from childhood.
She found that the less she thought, the more often she found simple truths appearing right in front of her.
Surely Joy’s clever granddaughter would know how to have it all without actually doing it all.
“Forgiveness comes easier with age,” Joy
Sometimes their children would do everything exactly as they’d taught them, and sometimes they would do all the things they’d told them not to do, and seeing them suffer the tiniest disappointments would be more painful than their own most significant losses, but then other times they would do something so extraordinary, so unexpected and beautiful, so entirely of their own choice and their own making, it was
like a splash of icy water on a hot day.