A House With Good Bones

by T. Kingfisher

Still, ecru. It’s like if you couldn’t decide on white or beige and combined the two for maximum blandness.

Like many family dynamics, it didn’t have to be healthy, it just had to work.)

Any outrage I felt on behalf of child-me was swamped in the wrath that Brad, at eleven, was running himself ragged having to protect me from adults.

But that’s life for you. Hate it, complain about it, it’s still happening.

Real or not, monsters don’t bother you while you’re peeing. (This is one of the lesser-known laws.)

“Anywhere there’s people, there’s a possibility of evil, wouldn’t you say?”

“Lots of nurses get like that, I think. And very brisk and efficient and rather exasperated with healthy people. They have to save their compassion for all the ones who are dying.”

Science hinges on repeatability.

Maybe this was the sound of beige paint, this fraught absence of sound.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

I was terrified and miserable and in pain, and it turned out that I could still be embarrassed.

The problem with family is that they know where all the levers are that make you move. They’re usually the ones who installed the levers in the first place.