“William gave a hard laugh. "Is that how you treat family around here? You kidnap her from her husband, lock her up in a cell then expect her to wipe out everyone she loves because some quack job who isn't even from here thinks he can pay god? I don't know about you, but that doesn't sound very brotherly to me." He gently took my arm and pulled me away from Brice. "Now. I think I heard the lady ask you to leave.”

“It's just that, right now, I want to hear you promise me that if we do run out of time and I go mad, like Miranda, it ends with me. The curse ends here, because our baby will be safe. You will make that happen. Isn't that so?"It took him a minute. "Yes," he said finnally. "It's so. Although, if we're just going to talk about the baby, I can think of an easier way to save her."Oh? What?"I'd just lock her up from her sixteenth birthday on."Lucy didn't laugh. "Don't think I haven't thought of that too, love. but here's the thing. That parents try that in all the fairy tales. It never works.”

“And you've gone on all these years hating each other. Gil felt that hate. He could tell just being here. That's one of the things that drove him away from here, from me...'Mom was still so long I looked up at her...She shook her head....'No, Yelena, I never hate Ben an' Ben don't hate me. Gospode Boge! I love him here so all these years!' Mom touched her breast and her face broke into life. Her eyes were softer. 'Me hate Ben!' she laughed...I couldn't look at her, but I had to say what was in my mind. 'But all these years, even when I was a child, I've felt that you hated each other. When I heard you that night you both sounded cold and hard.'Mom made a sound of disgust in her throat. 'That don't mean nothing. We get mad, sure! Like ice an' snow an' thunder an' lightning storm, but they don't hurt the wheat down in the ground any.' Mom picked up her whitewash brush and slapped it against the rough boards. 'Yolochka, you don't know how love is yet.'...She finished her wall and poured the whitewash that was left back in the bigger pail. 'You can write that young Gil of yours that he don't know what he think he does. Sure, we fight sometime, but we got no hate here.”

“God, I love you," he said, and laid his head on her belly, his arms locked around her hips.Madelyn slid her fingers into his hair. "It took you long enough," she said gently."What I lack in quickness, I make up in staying power.""Meaning?""That I'll still be telling you that fifty years from now." He paused and turned his head tokiss her stomach.”

“He reached out and grasped her arm. "Please don't walk away from me again. I know I hurt you the night you told me you loved me and I walked away, but Gabrielle, you've walked away from me twice now.”

“What did you call her?" she asks but I don't think it's her real question."Sunshine," I say, and she smiles like she believes it's perfect and she may be the only person other than me who would think so."What is she to you?" she whispers. The real question and I know the answer even if I don't know how to say it.Drew's muffled voice rises up from the floor before I can respond."Family," he says.And he's right.”