Chapter 1
I knew he was going to kill me. I did not realize then that I was an animal already dying. (1.91)
Chapter 2
We had been given, in our heavens, our simplest dreams. (2.17)
Chapter 3
He christened the walls and wooden chair with the news of my death, and afterwards he stood in the guest room/den surrounded by green glass. (3.64)
Chapter 4
He had put me in a waxy cloth sack and thrown in the shaving cream and razor from the mud ledge, his book of sonnets, and finally the bloody knife […] tumbled together with my knees, fingers,...
Chapter 5
A little strange, Fenerman thought, but it doesn't make the man a murderer. (5.51)
Chapter 6
Ruth smiled into her cup. "Well, as my dad would say, it means she's out of this shithole." (6.119)
Chapter 7
Had my brother really seen me somehow, or was he merely a boy telling beautiful lies? (7.35)
Chapter 10
It was not so much, she would write in her journals, that she wanted to have sex with women, but that she wanted to disappear inside them forever, to hide. (10.26)
Chapter 13
Clarissa, giggly with both fear and lust, had unlocked her privates and slept with Brian. However haphazardly, everyone I'd known was growing up. (13.2)
Chapter 14
It was on that day that I knew I wanted to tell the story of my family. Because horror on Earth is real and it is every day. It is like a flower or the sun; it cannot be contained. (14.100)
Chapter 15
To find a doorway out of her ruined heart in merciful adultery. (15.66)
Chapter 16
What no one understood – and they could not begin to tell anyone – was that it had been an experiment between them. Ray had kissed only me, and Ruth had never kissed anyone, so […...
Chapter 16: Snapshots
"Once upon a time there was a kid named Billy. He liked to explore. He saw a hole and went inside but never came out. The End." (16: Snapshots.45)
Chapter 17
They had gone the week before to get haircuts at the same barber shop […] and though Lindsey's hair was lighter and finer than Samuel's, the barber had given them identical short, spiky cuts....
Chapter 18
Heading north on First, she could tick off all the places she'd formerly stopped and stood, certain that she'd found a spot where a woman or girl had been killed. (18.9)
Chapter 19
He had been keeping, daily, weekly, yearly, an underground storage room of hate. Deep inside this, the four-year-old sat, his heart flashing. Heart to stone, heart to stone. (19.65)
Chapter 20
How could it be that you love someone so much and keep it a secret from yourself as you woke daily so far from home? (20.30)
Chapter 21
On that same road where I had been buried, Mr. Harvey passed by Ruth. All she could see were the women. Then: blackout. (21.160)
Chapter 22
I had taken this time to fall in love […] – in love with the sort of helplessness I had not felt in death – the helplessness of being alive, the dark bright pity of being human. (...
Epilogue: Bones
A moment later, the icicle fell. They heavy coldness of it threw him off balance just enough for him to stumble and pitch forward. I would be weeks before the snow in the ravine melted enough to un...