“Cathy, don't look so defeated. She was only trying to put us downagain.Maybe nothing did work out right for her, but that doesn't mean we aredoomed. Let's go forth tomorrow with no great expectations of findingperfection. Then, expecting only a small share of happiness, we won'tbe disappointed."If a little hill of happiness would satisfy Chris, good for him. Butafter all these years of striving, hoping, dreaming, longing-I wanted amountain high! A hill wasn't enough. From this day forward, I vowedto myself, I was in control of my life. Not fate, notGod, not even Chris was ever again going to tell me what to do, ordominate me in any way. From this day forward, I was my own person, totake what I would, when I would, and I would answer only to myself. I'dbeen kept prisoner, held captive by greed. I'd been betrayed,deceived, tied to, used, poisoned ... but all that was over now.”

“We will not open healed wounds!""My wounds are not healed!" I stated just as firmly. "They will never be healed until justice is done!”

“I used to have this toy, a magic slate. You wrote or drew on it and then, just by pulling up the plastic cover, everything you did disappeared and you could start new. Maybe everyone feels that on New Year's Eve: They can pull up the magic sheet and rewrite their lives.”

“Though I'm not sure, I thought I saw women dressed in black, with her head and face covered by a black veil, duck behind a tree as we approached the road and parked car. Hiding so we wouldn't see her. But I caught a glimpse, enough to reveal the rope of lustrous pearls she wore. Pearls that were there for a thin white hand to lift and nervously, out of long habit, twist and untwist into a knot. Only one women I knew did that--and she was the perfect one to wear black, and should run to hide!Forever hide! Color all her days black! Every last one!”

“Then the wind came in with Bart and blew the vase of roses from the table. I stood and stared down at the crystal pieces and the petals scattered about. Why was the wind always trying to tell me something? Something I didn't want to hear!”

“Little girls get hurt when they play grown-up games.”

“I remembered Grandmere Catherine used to tell me your first impressions about people usually prove to be the truest because your heart is the first to react.”

“Being rich and coming from a distinguished family background doesn't guarantee happiness, Abby. In fact, it might make happiness harder to find because you have to live up to akk that expectation.”

“Yes, I am a prisoner of sorts, but my prison isn't the house. It's my own thoughts that lock me up!”

“We had been separated by time and distance and events so long, it was as if we had to get to know each other again, but if it was possible to fall in love with the same person twice, I did.”

“Whatever doesn't destroy you, makes you stronger. Hardships have a way of toughening us, if they don't kill us.”