The Mostly True Story of Tanner and Louise

by Colleen Oakley

If there was anything worse in life than a man telling you to calm down when you were upset, she didn’t know what it was.

Adultnapped. Is that a thing?

Louise Constance Wilt had never done anything against her will in her entire life.

Jules threatened to move in with her and Charlie started sending websites of home care workers, she chose the least of three evils:

Louise knew she should say other old people, but honestly. That would suggest she was one of them.

Louise couldn’t decide if she was pleased to have not been patronized or horrified that the girl was so rude.

a souvenir from a trip you didn’t want to forget. That was all grief was, really, Louise had determined—remembering.

Here it was, a way to get the money she needed to go back to Northwestern. Back to her life.

when you grow up doing active-shooter drills in school, a fear of guns is kind of ingrained.”

Was this how old people flirted? Ew.

“Nothing in life goes according to plan. Nothing.

Tanner needed Mrs. Wilt. Or needed to be needed, anyway.

Louise/Patty believed she was doing some kind of favor to the world—stealing from the rich but helping the poor.

Louise had had enough peers succumb to dementia and Alzheimer’s—two sides of the same coin

Was this entire journey based on . . . a delusion?

teach the house not to catch on fire, instead of teaching the arsonist not to light it.”

In life, there were two kinds of friends: friends who would wish you well on your journey to battle, and friends who would jump in the trenches with you.