jacie

“At first, I struggled with some of the bigger words, but Kinsella kept his fingernail under each, patiently, until I guessed it or half-guessed it and then I did this by myself until I no longer needed to guess, and read on. It was like learning to ride the bike; I felt myself taking off, the freedom of going places I couldn’t have gone before, and it was easy.”
― Claire Keegan, Foster

“My heart does not so much feel that it is in my chest as in my hands, and that I am carrying it along swiftly, as though I have become the messenger for what is going on inside of me.”
― Claire Keegan, Foster

“I look out across the sea. There, the two lights are blinking as before, but with another, steady light, shining in between.
“Can you see it?” he says.
“I can,” I say. “It’s there.”
And that is when he puts his arms around me and gathers me into them as though I were his own.”
― Claire Keegan, Foster

“The sun, at a slant now, throws a rippled version of how we look back at us. For a moment, I am afraid. I wait until I see myself not as I was when I arrived, looking like a gypsy child, but as I am now, clean, in different clothes, with the woman behind me. I dip the ladle and bring it to my lips. This water is cool and clean as anything I have ever tasted: it tastes of my father leaving, of him never having been there, of having nothing after he was gone.”
― Claire Keegan, Foster