“Sometimes, she said, mostly to herself, I feel I do not know my children... It was a fleeting statement, one I didn't think she'd hold on to; after all, she had birthed us alone, diapered and fed us, helped us with homework, kissed and hugged us, poured her love into us. That she might not actually know us seemed the humblest thing a mother could admit.”

“...after all, she had birthed us alone, diapered and fed us, helped us with homework, kissed and hugged us, poured her love into us. That she might not actually know us seemed the humblest thing a mother could admit.”

“She likes us,” said Umbo. “I know, I could feel it too,” said Rigg. “She’s really glad to have us here. I think she loves us like her own children.” “Whom she murdered and cut up into the stew.” “They were delicious.”

“The woman was simply leaving us alone with our future, the future she wouldn't be a part of. She didn't know how to do it or what it was, but she was trying to give it to us.”

“Sometimes the monsters are not monsters, she says. I know. I nod. And sometimes the monsters are within us all, even in those we think are most good.”

“Okay, Lucy, what did you want to talk to me about?" he asked."Us." "There is no us," Val reminded her firmly—although he had gotten misty just a moment before while holding her hand. She had given him both the best years of his life and the worst. "There used to be an us," she suggested, "which was a good us, a great us. Now there isn't an us, but that doesn't mean there can't be an us again. And a great us, not just a good us, because without us, I do okay and sometimes not even okay." Val's eyebrows wrinkled and he stared hard at her. "That didn't come out quite like I imagined," Lucy said. Romantic it certainly wasn't. "I meant to say, I'd like us to have a second chance.”