Lost in the Moment and Found (Wayward Children, #8)

by Seanan McGuire

FOR THE CHILD I WAS. I WILL SPEND MY ENTIRE LIFE TRYING TO MAKE UP FOR THE FACT THAT WHEN I WAS YOU, I DIDN’T RUN SOON ENOUGH. I’M SORRY.

He should have been right there at the end of the aisle, watching her with the little smile on his face that he reserved for what he called her “feral child moments,” what he called the times when she ran wild and free and unfettered by the expectations of a world that was inevitably going to come crashing down on her soon enough.

She had a pretty mother with long dark hair and a laugh like watermelon on a hot summer afternoon, sweet and good and oddly sticky in its own way.

When Antsy made the lists of things she’d lost, to justify being Lost herself, she didn’t include her belief that adults could be trusted. That thing, out of everything, had been so small and fundamental that she couldn’t even see that it was gone.