What Alice Forgot

by Liane Moriarty

She was turning thirty soon, with a terrifying mortgage and a husband and a baby on the way, but she didn’t feel that different from when she was fifteen.

but the rule of life was that the boys got to decide which girls were pretty; it didn’t really matter how ugly they were themselves.)

sometimes you had to be brave enough to “point your life in a new direction.”

We sure do live in a seedy, gray, trashy world,

Early love is exciting and exhilarating. It’s light and bubbly. Anyone can love like that. But love after three children, after a separation and a near-divorce, after you’ve hurt each other and forgiven each other, bored each other and surprised each other, after you’ve seen the worst and the best—well, that sort of a love is ineffable. It deserves its own word.