“She looked at Will with a direct glance, full of delighted confidence."You approve of my going away for years, then, and never coming here again till I have made myself of some mark in the world?" said Will, trying hard to reconcile the utmost pride with the utmost effort to get an expression of strong feeling from Dorothea.She was not aware how long it was before she answered. She had turned her head and was looking out of the window on the rose-bushes, which seemed to have in them the summers of all the years when Will would be away.”

“She laughs and looks out the window and I think for a minute that she's going to start to cry. I'm standing by the door and I look over at the Elvis Costello poster, at his eyes, watching her, watching us, and I try to get her away from it, so I tell her to come over here, sit down, and she thinks I want to hug her or something and she comes over to me and puts her arms around my back and says something like 'I think we've all lost some sort of feeling.”

“For once I didn't look away immediately. I forced myself to meet her contemptuous gaze. I allowed myself be swept away by it, to drown in it - the way I'd done so many times before. The way I would willingly do again. Because at least she was here to hate me. At least I had that. I watched my daughter conjure up the filthiest look in her vast arsenal before she turned away with complete disdain. I didn't mind that so much. It meant I could watch her, drink her in without her protest. Look at our daughter, Callum. Isn't she beautiful, so very beautiful? She laughs like me, but when she smiles... Oh Callum, when she smiles, it's picnics in Celebration Park and sunsets on our beach and our very first kiss all over again. When Callie Rose smiles at me, she lights up my life.When Callie Rose smiles at me.”

“He sat and looked at her. “How is Mary Darling?”“Fast asleep after playing and having a bath,” she said. “The nursery is lovely.”“I’m glad you like it.”“Rose and Annie are obviously practiced nursemaids, and what is even better, they seem to like Mary, and she them.”He grunted. “It would take a hard heart to turn away from my Mary Darling.”A smile curved the corners of her lips. “You didn’t seem too enamored of her when you first met.”“She has a forceful personality, as do I. We just took a bit to get to know one another.”

“The museums in children’s minds, I think, automatically empty themselves in times of utmost horror—to protect the children from eternal grief.For my own part, though: It would have been catastrophe if I had forgotten my sister at once. I had never told her so, but she was the person I had always written for. She was the secret of whatever artistic unity I had ever achieved. She was the secret of my technique. Any creation which has any wholeness and harmoniousness, I suspect, was made by an artist or inventor with an audience of one in mind.Yes, and she was nice enough, or Nature was nice enough, to allow me to feel her presence for a number of years after she died—to let me go on writing for her. But then she began to fade away, perhaps because she had more important business elsewhere.”

“I know.” He leaned in and brushed his knuckles across her cheek. “And you can try and pretend it’s okay. That you’re strong and tough and you don’t need anyone. That you didn’t need her. But that’s all bullshit. I know it, and you know it.”Savannah stared at Cole.“You’re so pushy. I told you my story. Why can’t you leave it alone?”“Have you ever dealt with it?”She’d spent so many years holding it all inside.“I’m here right now, aren’t I? I obviously dealt with my past.”“I’m not talking about surviving it. Yeah, you survived it. But you haven’t let go of it.” He rubbed her arm. “What she did to you mattered. It wasn’t fair.”He was wrong. She was fine. It didn’t matter. She had always shown everyone how strong she was.“Show me how you feel, Peaches.”Her bottom lip trembled. She got up, walked to the window to look outside, staring at the darkness, not really seeing anything but the years falling away, stripping away the cool, confident woman she was now, revealing the scared little girl she once was. She’d vowed to never go back to that place, to never revisit those feelings again, yet here she stood.Cole wrapped his arms around her. She stiffened.“It’s okay to be vulnerable, Savannah, to let someone see you scared.”“I’m not scared. Not anymore.”