Sharon

“IT BEGAN BECAUSE I am afraid of the dark. Over the course of the first eighteen years of my life, my family lived in nine houses. I learned by the fourth of these that not all houses are the same. Some are still. Empty and quiet. Others have long, long memories, hung thick like curtains and so dense you can taste their bitterness the moment you cross the threshold. I have a theory about houses, says Andrés. From the age of thirteen, as my family settled into its eighth house, I found the sensation of being watched unbearable. I began to sleep with the lights on. For years, I have endured teasing from my sisters. I still fear the intimate horrors houses see and keep, what grudges build over decades and stain their walls like so much water damage. But it’s only a theory, after all. A theory that planted the seed of an idea.”
― Isabel Cañas, The Hacienda

“It was right for Beatriz to leave. Just as it was right for me to stay here, on this land, with the people who needed me most. That did not mean saying goodbye would be easy.”
― Isabel Cañas, The Hacienda

“The past can’t hurt me anymore. None of it. It only exists in my memory.”
― Laura Thalassa, Rhapsodic

“I savored the memory of her voice. The way her whisper held a profane, exquisite power over me, how its brush could send an aching trill down my spine.”
― Isabel Cañas, The Hacienda