“Today, it felt like time should be measured by how much of the future she had left, and needed to be counted forward. She felt proud listening, as if somehow Jonathan Parish's speech reflected on her, as if she could take credit for some part of it, for him.”

“That was the dirty secret associated with her past. Not that she'd been abused but that somehow she felt that she deserved it because she'd let it happen. Even now, it shamed her, and there were times when she felt hideously ugly, as though the scars that had been left behind were visible to everyone.”

“Quite suddenly Meggie felt fear rise in her like black brackish water, she felt lost, terribly lost, she felt it in every part of her. She didn't belong here! What had she done?”

“…always felt the pain of her friends so keenly that she could not speak easy, fluent words of comforting. Besides, she remembered how well-meant speeches had hurt her in her own sorrow and was afraid.”

“She had made her choice, and this was it, where she felt safe, in a world she could, for the most part, control. Page 328”

“Tugs had felt a sense of possibility today as she made that small speech, and there had to be a way to get that feeling back.”