“For didn’t everyone have secret parts and shadows?”

“Uncle seemed to take pleasure from knowing things other people didn’t. Silas did not like thinking this about the man who’d given them a place to live, but there was a sort of smirk hidden inside his uncle’s words that made Silas feel like he was being laughed at. He knew that tone. He’d heard it often enough from kids at school, from the ones who’d look at you like you weren’t worth talking to, from the ones who looked at your unfashionable clothes, or the shape of your face, and told everyone else that you were a freak. Silas was scared of those kids, because usually, those were the ones who didn’t think that normal rules applied to them, the ones who thought they could get away with anything.”

“Silas was tired of living in a world where everyone and everything held its breath.”

“Dolores liked that story. Men were wolves and practical women took the knife to them, and those wolves, those sharp-toothed men, they didn’t come back after that.”

“Here were love letters, the youth knew. Secret love letters. Unfound, still waiting somewhere beyond the mist. A young man’s words for this girl, maybe her words for him. Their private words for each other. Somewhere in the world, these letters sat hidden still, but might, at any moment, be found and read, calling her most cherished secrets from their hiding place back into the circle of the sun.”

“Stories wander around, go from one land to another, sometimes parts change.”

“He could feel her doing that list thing, where she didn’t speak or look at you because she was tallying something in her head. Figuring out how bad you’d messed up.”