Secrets She Left Behind Quotes
"I can stay alone," I called, but it came out quiet on account of being sick. I was sixteen; I didn’t need a babysitter.
"Just think, Andy," Uncle Marcus said. "When we pick you up at Sara…Miss Sara’s this afternoon, Maggie will be with us."
"I can’t thank you enough, Sara," and things like that.
"It’s a huge favor to ask, but I can’t leave him alone."
"You crying?" she asked. "Girl, you cried the day you come in here and now you crying the day you leave. Make up your mind."
"Don’t ever wanna see you in here again, hear?" she said.
"I hope, though, that this can be an opportunity to practice forgiveness."
"I wasn’t the only outsider, though. Not the only one getting picked on. I wasn’t the weakest by far."
"This feels so right, I thought, listening to the spray of water behind the bathroom door."
"I just had a need to see my Maggie girl before I did anything else."
"Where my heart had felt light only half an hour earlier, now it was weighed down."
"In a few minutes, they’d be gone. Both of them. I’d be alone again."
"We can't always have what we want in life. I should know that by now."
"I'm not going anywhere," I said when I got my emotions under control, "but things are about to change."
"It’s out of my hands. I had nothing to do with it once it was set up."
"I’m happy," I said. "I want this baby so much, Jamie."
"Trust me on it. But you have to let yourself feel it. Embrace it even."
"I just can't picture you being an arsonist," she said.
"I’m okay," I said. "But I want to leave."
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"No, no, I don't, Maggie," he said. "You've already given yourself a life sentence."
"Uncle Marcus and I cared about each other," she said. "That's why we made love. Maggie is right that we shouldn’t have because I was married to your dad...at the time."
"You're trying to paint things as either black or white," he said. "As either good or evil. It's never that neat."
"They think he has this...condition called fetal alcohol syndrome. He looks okay, except for being small. But it's something about his development or...I don’t understand it all yet."
"I’d rather have straight," I said. This felt so high school, the two of us pampering ourselves and talking girl talk. I was loving it.
"You’ve become a selfish, self-absorbed bitch, Laurel, you know that?" I stared hard into her eyes. "I know your hormones got screwed up," I said. "I understand you can’t help the depression. But you can fix it, Laurel. You’re the only one who can."
"D’you remember we talked last year about another powerful urge you have? Used to have?"
"I’m sorry," he said. "It’s…a terrible situation. Maggie and I are going to need to move back to the Sea Tender, Sara," he said. "She needs my help."
"It was what you’d expect," I said finally. I stared straight ahead at the TV, where Jack Black was chatting with Kate Winslet. "It was scary. Lonely. A lot of really tough women." I so did not want to think about prison.
"Sometimes at the hospital, I forget about myself. I think about what those kids are going through and forget all about prison and the fire and just think about them instead."
"There are good people left in the world, and you are most certainly one of them."
"It erased any negativity I might be feeling and left peace in its place."
"I wanted some of what I experienced on Sundays to carry me through every day. That spiritual pull."
"I want you back. I want us back. We're great friends, but I want the rest of it. I want all of it."
"I could die here, I thought, shivering. Hypothermia could get me."
"You ain't evil. Jesus tells us to forgive others to find our own salvation."
"Sometimes you have to put your needs aside for the sake of other people."
"I thought we'd dodged the bullet. He seemed so healthy."
"I can't automatically say, okay, I forgive myself. It doesn’t work that way."
"I was so desperate for friendship that I built her into this great friend in my mind, never realizing that she didn’t think of me that way at all."
"I loved my mother more than I would ever love Jen, and my mother loved me more than Jen ever would."
"I felt grateful to her for saying 'we' instead of 'you.'"
"I don’t want your help," I said. "Your daughter gets out of her prison in eleven months. My son’s in his prison for the rest of his life."
"Will you let me help?" she asked. "Any way I can. Financially. Or taking him to appointments or running errands for you. Anything."
"They’re young, though, Sara. Maybe someday…in spite of everything…maybe their relationship will be important to them."
"I can’t talk to you." I pushed my cart past her, pushed it all the way down the aisle to the rear of the store, where I hurried inside the restroom. I locked the door and leaned against it, biting back tears.
"I’m really sorry, Keith," she said. "For the fire. For your injuries. They’re all my fault. I’d give anything to be able to change what happened."
"You can do community service here, you know," he said, his pen moving.
"Do you know that your mom’s ashes were scattered in the same place as our father’s ashes?" I asked after a while.
"Keith’s last name is Weston," I said to the lady, "but that doesn’t matter. He’s a Lockwood, whether he wants to be or not."