“If I allow my gaze to travel higher-which I won't-I'll see the solid gold basketball charm on a chain that my mother gave him for his eighteenth birthday nestled in his coarse, whorled chest hair. My front teeth throb as the memory of the charm bangs against them.”

“They brought along a young man named Andy who wants very much to see you." She steps aside to let him through.I tuck my hair back behind my ears.Meet his shining gaze and break into a smile.He is so tall.”

“No," I shout, because my mother doesn't know what I like anymore. "I don't eat things that bleed. Just cheese with lettuce or tomato and mayo. No dead fish or animals, please.""You see what I have to put up with?" my mother says.”

“The ache starts in my chest and spreads through my veins. The abuse I can handle; it's the happiness that cripples.”

“The weight in my pocket nudges my thigh, suddenly becomes my knife. I put my hand to its unforgiving outline and can't stop crying years of tears because if I don't stab my father with my weapon, then he is going to stab me with his.”

“And maybe love is terrifying. I'm terrified now, but not in the way she would think.I'm terrified because I hate who she is and what she's done, I do, and yet there is still something strong and powerful between us, some kind of deep, primal bond that won't end, won't snap or break or change, it just remains there inside me, as sold and factual as my blood and bones - she is my mother, I am her daughter - and I don't know what to call it because it doesn't feel like love, not the good kind I felt for Ellie, with all my heart, but instead an instinctual pull that's been there from the beginning, drawing me back to her again and again, the woman who has hurt me like no one else ever could, and now she's dying and the bond is still here, inside me, and I won't call it love or hate because emotions has nothing to do with the fact that she is my mother and I am her daughter, and we will be connected in that way forever.”

“So I leave proof of my existence behind me like a snail trail with the small hope that years of talking at me will someday soften her enough to talk with me, that she'll finally pull the knife from my chest and say yes, we are better off without him. That what happened wasn't my fault and from now on she will thrust herself between me and danger, and shout NO.”