“That was her mistake. She'd pinned her happiness to a teenage girl's chest. Idiot. The realization made her almost smile. She certainly knew better than that.”

“But it had gotten so boring, all that crying and wanting and needing. This year she'd realized that she'd never be like her mom, and the realization had freed her. She stopped trying to get good grades and make good friends, and do everything well. She had flourished in her rebellion, reveled in it.”

“A dark purple sky filled with the first few evening stars made her feel small. She smiled; that was what she expected from the sky. All her life, she'd gone out at night and stood beneath that blue velvet darkness. It was her temple, the true house of God, and it never failed to remind her of her place.”

“She still felt shell-shocked by all of it, numb. Beneath the numbness, though, was a raw and terrible anger that was unlike anything she'd felt before. She had so little experience with genuine anger that it scared her. She actually worried that if she started screaming, she'd never stop.”

“She'd been criticized for holding the reins of parenthood too tightly, of controlling her children too completely, but she didn't know how to let go. From the moment she'd first decided to become a mother, it had been an epic battle.”

“If she wasn't careful, she'd slide without a ripple into the gently flowing stream of her old life, pulled back under the current without a wimper of protest. Another housewife lost in the flow.”

“So now books were her only friends. She'd read Lord of the Rings so often she could recite whole scenes by memory.It was not a skill that aided one in becoming popular.”