“It wasn’t enough, just knowing that Noelle was alive and on her way back to us. So I sat there wondering if Noelle had screamed when she was taken. And if she had, why hadn’t anyone heard?”

“When had she moved so close? Her brain screamed at her to back away. She would regret this. She already regretted this.”

“Seeing her, well, it did things I hadn’t been ready to delve into before. Hell, I really didn’t even know at what point I had become ready.Probably happened somewhere between when I thought she was dead and when she wasn’t.”

“She was brave, wasn’t she? Look what she’d done. She hadn’t run back to the safety of San Francisco, but toward something dangerous and unknown. And Oscar had gone with her. He was it, the man she wanted to be with, and not just in sporadic or imagined trysts, Camille slowed her crawling as it dawned on her. She loved him. She loved Oscar Kildare. She loved him enough to give up everything she’d ever known.”

“Hazel shrugged. She heard Bobby’s voice in her head and wondered why it was she who was not allowed to hurt anyone.”

“Step by step she lived over every instant of the time she had been with Robert... She recalled his words, his looks. How few and meager they had been for her hungry heart! ... She wondered when he would come back. He had not said he would come back. She had been with him had heard his voice and touched his hand. But some way he had seemed nearer to her off there in Mexico.”