“She shook off the self-recrimination. What-ifs and could-have-beens were not the way to move forward. She knew that from experience.”

“I have a billion what-ifs and no way forward.”

“It didn't matter. If she was to have any hope of saving Bellusdeo and Maggaron now, she needed to finish what she started; the anger and the self-recrimination would just have to wait. She'd no doubt she'd return to it later; unlike laundry, she'd never left self-recrimination undone.”

“She couldn’t hide from everyone for the rest of her life… Well she could. That was the direction things were going. But she knew from long-ago experience that when you were uncertain and if you were courageous enough to let her in a real friend could do a world of good.”

“It was strange. ... If she'd never gone to the Amazon, never met Ash, she would most likely have been perfectly content with Todd. She wouldn't have understood those fleeting flashes of emptiness that come upon a per¬son from time to time. Now she knew what they were: the yearning for what could have been, for the road never taken.”

“She shook her head. She had been in that exact position on a number of occasions with Clark. She knew how easy it could be to just escape with Jack when she couldn't be around Clark. As wrong as she knew it was, she hadn't been able to stop herself. She had always thought that desperation came from wanting Jack, but maybe things were different with him. Perhaps he had always done it because he enjoyed the cloak and dagger effect of hiding and running away from his life with her.”