Shelbie > Recent Status Updates

Beau dies and it is hitting dean very very hard. Allie is trying and tries for weeks but he is drinking and doing drugs and she just can’t take it anymore so she ends things with him until he gets his shit together

They admit they have feelings for one another

Also screw that cop 0/100 star for him

Once Alaskan always Alaskan.

When she came back Matthew was so happy. Until she said she wanted him to meet someone. A boy. He thought she came here to introduce him to her new boyfriend, but it was actually his son. HEART WRENCHING

Leni to get a life and to stop running. Which is an ultimate sacrifice.
MJ is a fresh start for everyone which is a lot of pressure. I hope they went back to Seattle to visit them.
It also breaks my heart that leni expected the worst and still loved Matthew but he got a little better and was waiting for her.

I don’t think I have cried so hard during this book. 5/5 overall but Kristin Hannah rating is 4.25/5. The nightingale is still the best one for me.
This story wrecked me though.
Ernt destroyed so many lives while he was alive and afterwards to. In the end he had control over them until Cora died and that is heartbreaking.
I also think Cora fought like hell but she didn’t want to be alive either. She wanted

Childrens names: MJ, Kenai, and Cora

“It would fill her heart to see you all here, to know you’d given up time, with all you have to do, to remember her. To say goodbye. She said to me once that she felt like she’d been nothing, a reflection of other people. She never quite understood her own worth. I hope she’s looking down now and knows … finally … how loved she was.”

Once, a lifetime ago, she had worried about girls, only a few years older than her, who had gone missing. The stories had given her nightmares at thirteen. Now she knew there were a hundred ways to be lost and even more ways to be found.

“You know what I love most about you, Leni Allbright?”
“What?”
“Everything.” He took her in his arms and kissed her with everything that he had and all he hoped to have. When he finally let go, reluctantly, and drew back, they stared at each other, had a whole conversation in breaths taken and expelled. This was a beginning, he thought; a beginning in the middle, something unexpected and beautiful.

, stared up into his green eyes. “You know what I see? A man who should have died but wouldn’t give up. I see a man who fought to talk and walk and think. Every one of your scars breaks my heart and puts it back together. Your fear is every parent’s fear. I see the man I have loved for my whole life. The father of our son.”

He thought of all the things he’d once imagined he would teach a son, and it collapsed around him. He was too broken to hold anyone else together. “I can’t pick him up. Can’t put him. On my shoulders. He won’t want this. For a dad.” He knew Leni heard the longing in his voice at that; the universe in a three-letter word.

She touched his face, let her fingers trace the scars that put him back together

They were how he’d learned to read again. He handed it to her, unable to ask the question that had haunted him: Why did you stop writing to me?

Tom Walker is his grandfather. Alyeska is his aunt. It is unforgivable that they don’t know about MJ. They would love him as much as you do.”

“My mom was wrong about a lot of things, but one thing she had right was about the durability of love. It stays. Against all odds, in the face of hate, it stays. I left the boy I loved when he was broken and sick, and I hate myself for that. Matthew is MJ’s dad, whether Matthew can know what that means or not, whether he can hold him or talk to him or not. MJ deserves to know his own family.

“Do this for me. Be stronger than I ever was.”

Leni shook her head, too overwhelmed by sadness to say anything more than, “I won’t leave you.”
“Ah, baby girl. How many times have you had to say that in your life?” Mama sighed tiredly, gazed up at Leni through sad, watery eyes. Her breath was wheezing, labored. “But I am going to leave you. It’s the thing we can’t run from anymore. Please,” she whispered.

She was crying softly. Maybe Mama heard and knew why and knew there was nothing to say; or maybe all mothers cried right now. “Matthew,” she whispered, stroking his velvet cheek. “We’ll call you MJ. They called your Daddy Mattie sometimes, but I never did … and he knew how to fly … he would have loved you so much…”

That. Love doesn’t fade or die, baby girl. People tell you it does, but it doesn’t. If you love him now, you’ll love him in ten years and in forty. Differently, maybe, a faded version, but he’s part of you now. And you are part of him.”

---

Some choices you didn’t recover from; she was old enough to know that.

Or about babies who deserved better than the messed-up lives into which they were born.
Oh my god... Leni doesn't think Matthew knows who she is. but don't worry krisitin hannah will twist the knife and go to his perspective where he doesn't know Leni but he does know that she is important. Important to him and that is just gut wrenching. are you kidding me STFU.

Samwise Gamgee would never leave Frodo like this. No hero would ever do this. But books were only a reflection of real life, not the thing itself. They didn’t tell you about boys who broke their bodies and had their brains sheared down to the stem, who couldn’t talk or move or say your name. Or about mothers and daughters who made terrible, irrevocable choices.

“You mean with Dad,” Leni said, and there it was: the thing that made this even worse. Leni was carrying a Walker baby. Her father would blow a gasket when he found out.

Leni told her dad that she was pregnant. He started to hit her. Cora said to stop. He didn't and she shot him. Saying that he could not hurt Leni. He died.

Leni looked at him. “I’m the reason he’s hurt. He tried to save me. It’s my fault.”



“He couldn’t do anything else, Leni. Not after what happened to his mom. I know my son. Even if he’d known the price, he would have tried to rescue you.”

Matthew grieved for the mother he’d had. He figured Leni would grieve for the dad she wanted.

He made it sound so simple, as if it were a mathematical equation. But the connection between pain and love wasn’t linear. It was a web. “What’s it like?” she asked. “To feel safe?”

No excuses, kid. You leave this place the second you can. Run like hell, kid, and don’t look back. But Leni—”
“Yeah?”
“You be careful as hell until the day you leave.”

Leni looked at Large Marge. “I got in.”
“Congratulations, Leni.”
Leni felt numb. She’d been accepted.
To college.
“Now what?” Leni said.
“You go,” Large Marge said. “I’ve talked to Tom. He’s going to pay for it. Tica and I are buying your books and Thelma is giving you spending money. You’re one of us and we have your back.

Mama sat there a long time. Quiet. “Well. One kiss can change a girl’s world. Don’t I know that? But you’re not an ordinary girl in the suburbs with a Mr. Cleaver dad. Choices have consequences, Leni. Not just for you, either. For your boy. For me.” She touched her bruised cheekbone, wincing. “You need to stay away from him.”