One Step Too Far (Frankie Elkin, #2)

by Lisa Gardner

I don’t own anything I can’t afford to lose because I don’t want to die one day trying to protect something I never should’ve cared about in the first place.

I’m totally and completely convinced. Whatever this man says, I’m on board. Maybe I should’ve tried boot camp when I was younger, because I’m actually a little turned on right now. Soon enough, I know, I will hate him, as I have a long and troubled history with authority figures. But at this precise moment, I’m drinking the Kool-Aid and hoping for another glass.

She knew I loved my father. She died before I could tell her that I loved her, too. That I did admire her. That my father might have been my favorite playmate, but she was my hero, and I never would’ve gotten my act together if I hadn’t had the example of her strength to guide me.

We mourn the ones we’ve lost, but we agonize over the pieces of ourselves they took with them. The identities we’ll never have again. The emotions we’re certain we’ll never feel again. The sense of our own selves, becoming undone and disappearing just as completely and suddenly as those who vanished.