These Still Black Waters (Jess Lambert, #1)

by Christina McDonald

That’s all life was: a series of choices. That was what it all came down to in the end. It didn’t just happen. We made our choices. The good. The bad. The mundane. Free will.

the past may be dead, but it is our choice if we bury it.

I often thought of life as an echo. Stand on the edge of any abyss and shout into the dark, your echo will return. What you send out comes back. You could choose to do what was right or you could choose to do what was wrong, but when you chose wrong, rest assured, those ghosts would come back to haunt you.

I was scared, and it got the best of me.”

The calming daily routine, the reassuring presence of animals, so much better than people.

Animals have no pretenses; they don’t hold grudges or know how to hate. They are the only part of my life that is uncomplicated.

Sometimes I wish I could go back in time and use an eraser to smudge out the things I did, the bad I carry inside me. But unfortunately, life doesn’t come with a gift receipt. You can’t just exchange it for a better one and carry on as if nothing has happened.

Sometimes being a mother is like death by a thousand cuts.

Sometimes I get caught in my own world of worry. Catastrophizing. I know the worry and anxiety exist only in my head, but the truth is that sometimes fear screams an awful lot louder than logic.

You can choose to do good next time. You are more than the worst things you do.”

Some people didn’t deserve the good they got in life. They hid their secrets, hoping they would never see the light of day. That the dark shadow in them would never be exposed. And then, when it was, they were surprised. They denied it. Because nobody wanted to believe the worst about themselves.

If you tell yourself a lie for long enough, it becomes polished with the sheen of truth.

Everything melts away like ice cream in the sun. Damn, if it isn’t the best feeling in the world.

It’s ironic that I can’t get back in a car, but on a motorcycle I feel completely in control. Not just in control, powerful.

denying the truth has never been good enough to change the facts.

Some people are so good at filing bad things away in little folders. I wonder if when we die, part of getting through those pearly gates will include rifling through that filing cabinet, our own personal string of sins, white tabs with all our dirty secrets. The things we hid in the darkest parts of ourselves.

Life is just a game of choice, after all. Every one of us has the potential for great good and great wrong, but those who make the wrong choices usually pay somewhere down the line. Because sooner or later, the past always comes for you.

Bad choices stick like honey, I find, and I had no way of untangling myself now.

we hurt the people we love far more than we ever hurt those we hate.

I don’t believe in ghosts or bogeymen or apparitions. Just bad people who do bad things.”

“Maybe it isn’t the dead who haunt the living but the living who do the haunting. Or maybe we haunt ourselves. Like, we’re haunted by our pasts, by our mistakes, the ones that aren’t so easily forgiven. But maybe those ghosts don’t have to be the only thing that defines us.”

Bad people. Good people. It isn’t that simple. None of us is just one or the other. We’re both. A collection of the best and worst things we’ve done.

He was the fire-and-brimstone type, not the peace-and-love type.

I was born sinful, and no matter how good I tried to be or how many prayers I prayed, I was ultimately still a sinner, and as a sinner, I deserved death simply for existing.

if you’re always looking outside yourself to be rescued, you’re going to be waiting an awfully long time. No one can rescue you except you.

I was raised Christian and was more than familiar with the biblical passages that discussed the merits—or lack thereof—of revenge and justice. Let bygones be bygones. Forgive and forget. The past is the past.

I preferred the Greek ethos of justice and law, rather than mercy or forgiveness. I was Artemis, the goddess who, in her revenge, turned a man into a stag that was then hunted by his own dogs.

I’ve always loved animals more than people. They didn’t betray you; they didn’t hate or get suspicious. They didn’t lie. All they wanted were the basest things: food, water, a little love.

That’s the thing about choices. They never affect just us. Our choices are not free of consequence, for us or for others they may impact.

I thought by not speaking up, I just wasn’t making a choice, but not making a choice is still a choice. And when you decide something, you also end something.

life isn’t defined by the moment you die but by all the moments you spent living.

I am more than just my greatest mistake. Everyone has darkness in their life, but that doesn’t mean we can’t move into the light.

Maybe that’s all parenting is, a succession of moments where we let go and then let go again and again.

the dead cling to the living as much as the living cling to the dead. Maybe we are all haunted by our ghosts.