“I keep thinking that if I could just unzip my skin, step out of this body, then I would see who I really am.“ She nods her head slowly. „What do you think you‘d look like?” “Smaller, for a start.”

“As long as I'm between home and the clinic I do all right. But out in the real world, I feel like prey. I slink around and can feel people looking at me. I feel their eyes boring into me. I feel what they're thinking: Watch her, she could go off anytime. But within the walls of my farmhouse, I climb out of the protective shell, my arms slowly rise like a phoenix, and I dance, wail, fly around the room and then collapse, crying, in front of my mirrors. I start to see in the mirror what it is I really look like, instead of what I was trained from the womb to see. I do not write about it. I do not talk about it. I do not know what I am doing. But just like a baby bird, I am blinking once-sealed eyes and unfolding damp wings. I cannot articulate the past. A part of me knows it's there, lurking, just behind what I can acknowledge, but it is not within sight. And I am keeping it that way. ”

“Riddle me this - she is my daughter but I am not her father: who am I?I am a step parent. Ah, but I don't really believe in the term step-parent. I don't think the role exists. Not really. For either in the end you are either a child's parent or you are not. And blood does not have a lot do to with it.”

“I felt like I'd unzipped my skin and momentarily stepped out of it, leaving a crazy person in charge”

“I walked towards her. Jean-Claude grabbed my arm. "Do not harm her, Anita. She is under our protection.""I swear to you that I will not lay a finger on her tonight. I just want to tell her something."He released my arm, slowly, like he wasn't sure it was a good idea. I stepped next to Monica, until our bodies almost touched. I whispered into her face, "If anything happens to Catherine, I will see you dead."She smirked at me, confident in her protectors. "They will bring me back as one of them."I felt my head shake, a little to the right, a little to the left, a slow precise movement. "I will cut out your heart." I was still smiling, I couldn'tseem to stop. "Then I will burn it and scatter the ashes in the river. Do you understand me?"She swallowed audibly. Her health-club tan looked a little green. She nodded, staring at me like I was the bogey man.I think she believed I'd do it. Peachy keen. I hate to waste a really good threat”

“Seeing her this last time, I threw myself on her body. And she opened her eyes slowly. I was not scared. I knew she could see me and what she had finally done. So i shut her eyes with my fingers and told her with my heart: I cah see the truth, too. I am strong, too.”