“He wasn’t looking at her, was at such an oblique angle to her that his face was little more than a sliver, but she knew him at once. “It was like reading,” she would try to explain later, and she wasn’t talking about phonics. She didn’t break him into syllables—shoulders, hair, shirt collar, hand, nose, cheekbone—and put him back together again; she didn’t sound him out. He was a language she knew, and it was whole-word recognition: Will.”

“Sarah put the man and the other dead children out of her head. Later, perhaps, she would watch Lockie out in the garden and cry for all the mothers who would not see their children again. Later she would weep for the sadness of their loss and the joy of her own luck, but now she only had eyes for her boy, her little man, her Lockie. She ran her hands over his body, lifted his shirt a little and caught sight of a yellowing bruise. The air caught in her throat.‘Oh Jesus, Jesus, Jesus,’ she whispered.Someone had hit him. She wanted to undress him right then to see the damage but Lockie was so fast asleep. She knew he wasn’t just sleeping because he was tired. He had gone to the same place she had been in for months. She and Lockie looked alike now. The angles on his face matched hers and in a way she was glad. She had suffered along with him.And now here he was.”

“She wasn’t going to lie and she wasn’t going to try to hide Terrible or who he was. She loved him and he was hers, and that made her so proud her chest hurt, and if anybody didn’t like it they could go fuck themselves.”

“His hands tightened on her shoulders as the truth washed over him. My God, she really had told him yes.He opened his mouth to ask if she was certain then didn’t. If he did, she might change her mind, and he had no intention of giving her that opportunity. Underneath his hands, her shoulders quivered. She raised her gaze to him again, and his heart plunged into the depths. She had her lower lip trapped between her teeth, and her eyes were tormented pools of blue green. His heart broke just looking at her.She was not in love with him. He knew that. Her acceptance of him had nothing to do with the sort of desperate longing he had for her. Not that he hadn’t known that the first time he proposed to her, but to have her say yes out of despair added an edge of pain to his euphoria. He knew she wasn’t indifferent to him, after all, and for the moment, that sufficed to keep the hurt at arm’slength.”

“That was not her husband; she knew him, and that was not him. But of course she didn’t really know him.”

“Now that she decided she knew exactly what she wanted –him- she couldn’t wait to break the news. And if he didn’t want her, she could live with that – what she wouldn’t be able to live with was if she never told him.”