Jennifer McMahon

“And, as Rhonda told the story, she thought: this is how the past gets passed down. This is how memories are made. Half-invented, embellished, given a touch of whimsy.”

“Oh my God!” Sam said again, his voice shaking. I’ve given birth to something inhuman, Phoebe thought. A lamprey with row after row of teeth.”

“Phoebe realized how very wrong she’d been about this house, this family. It was far darker, more dangerous than the places she’d grown up in. In the dingy little apartments her mother rented, everything was out in the open. Their lives were dirty and squalid, but they didn’t pretend to be anything else. Here, things seemed so normal, so perfect, but it was all a deception.”

“What if things happened to you—special, magic things—because you’d been preparing for them?”

“Think of me. Remember me. Love me.”

“...they were exactly what the other needed; the missing piece that made everything else magically click into place.”

“The world was full of dangers now that she was pregnant: mercury in tuna, hot tubs, beer, secondhand smoke, over-the-counter medicine. Not to mention crazy baby-abducting fairy kings.”

“Lisa smiled. 'You know how sometimes, you catch the faintest hint of movement in the corner of your eye, then you blink and it's gone? That's them.”

“Ain't no point worrying about what's been or what's gonna be. You just gotta do your best right now. And trust everyone else is doing the same.”

“Storytelling wasn't about making things up. It was more like inviting the stories to come through her, let themselves be told.”

“And deep down, she felt like maybe she didn't deserve it-that she belonged with the petty thieves and guys who drank Pabst Blue Ribbon for breakfast”

“Sometimes what a person needs most is to be forgiven.”

“the dead can blame”

“I've lived here ... my whole life. It's where I lost all my baby teeth. Where tiny hamster, gerbil, and bird skeletons lie in rotted-out cardboard coffins beneath the oak tree in our backyard. Also where, if some future archaeologist goes digging, they'll find the remains of a plush toy: a gray terrier named Toto I buried after the accident.”