“One bright, sunny morning not too long before Christmas, Annabelle woke to feel the sunlight’s mockery shining upon her shriveled skin. Its rays caressed her body, taunting and reminding her that though her light would soon be extinguished, the world around her would shine on, vibrant as always.”

“Tina and her mother were in the process of healing; they had to heal and soon they would be healed. But Tina knew that was a load of shit. Tim’s death wasn’t some broken bone that could be fixed. Nothing could fix that. It pissed her right off the way everyone expected her to regenerate her heart the way she could regenerate skin on a cut.”

“Now she took the pills and, just before she closed her eyes, she summoned Lockie and his smile, and then the dreams would come.In her dream her golden boy tries again and again and again to stand up on the boogie board until he manages to remain upright for at least a minute. In her dream Sarah can feel the tears on her cheeks. Her golden boy was lost and she was too. She tried to dream that they found each other again but she couldn’t control her dreams any more than she could control her nightmares.”

“In the bedroom Sarah lay next to her son. She could hear movement in the kitchen and wondered if Doug had started preparing dinner. She longed for something sweet to eat. She had not been hungry for days, for weeks, for months, but now, with her son lying near her, she wanted the taste of sugar on her tongue. She would not move though. She didn’t know if she would ever be able to leave his side again.”

“How am I going to tell the kids? How do I tell the man that I love, the man that I swore I’d grow old with that we won’t have that happy ending that he and I have worked so hard for? How do I say goodbye to all of you? How do I let go?”

“She was gone, and all that was left was the space you'd grown around her, like a tree that grows around a fence. For a long time, it remained hollow. Years, maybe. And when at last it was filled again, you knew that the new love you felt for a woman would have been impossible without Alma. If it weren't for her, there would never have been an empty space, or the need to fill it.”

“She didn’t see what she didn’t want to see. The women on the street were pretty girls waiting for a date and she was a princess waiting for her prince. The world could be a lot easier to deal with if you lived mostly inside your own head. Probably all the same ugly, sick, twisted stuff went on behind the pretty fences of her childhood anyway.She had built herself a fairly impressive wall in the last two years, but then she had been building that long before she got to the Cross. She could watch the world shit itself up right in front of her and not feel a thing. Sometimes she thought that any feeling at all would have been a luxury, but nothing got through. It meant that nothing could hurt her but it also meant that nothing could move her either. It was a price she was willing to pay. It was one interesting fucking trade-off.”