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She’d seen sorrow and happiness, tragedy and joy, and plenty of the mundane, the cheerful low hum generated by families at the beach in the summertime.
In all those years, through all that time, she had only ever been able to watch.
she had never been able to assert her own will or even make herself known.
Changes were coming. She had so many things to tell her people, and she was running out of time to figure out how.
You think you know someone, then you’re locked in a house together for over a year, and it turns out, you never knew him at all.
College didn’t erase the differences between how everyone grew up, but it disguised those differences—except, of course, for the kids who went out of their way to drop the names of the places they’d vacationed or brag about getting bottle service at some club, and those kids were easy enough to avoid.
Now that they’d moved out, Ruby wondered if what she was feeling was that enchantment fading, the luster of new love disappearing, evaporating like a dream, revealing the reality of the world.
they’d treated her like an adult who could be trusted to make decisions about her own life. Except, Ruby wondered, what if she was making a bad decision? What if she couldn’t be trusted? And, if that was true, what was she supposed to do now?
He had played at being a free spirit, a modern-day hippie, rootless and untethered, and he’d enjoyed that life, knowing it wasn’t permanent, knowing that, deep down, he’d always wanted conventionality; a life like his own parents had, only, of course, not miserable. He’d wanted a suburb, a family, a house with a swimming pool. Just as Annette had foretold.
Except for four days, more than twenty years ago, when Eli had not been good, when he’d been the exact opposite of good. And now, he feared, the result of that single, brief lapse had come back to haunt him, the way he always knew it would, and the truth, instead of setting anyone free, was going to destroy everything he’d worked for and hurt everyone he’d loved.
