TL *Humaning the Best She Can*’s Reviews > Homecoming > Status Update

"Bad things happen to the best of people, and we cannot let them overwhelm us. Life doesn't always work out the way we plan, but it does work out in the end."

We can’t allow ourselves to be the victims of our childhoods,” she said. “One can’t blame one’s parents—or indeed one’s children—for everything. Most people do the best they can and sometimes, sadly, it’s not enough.”

Where everything was bright and busy, and smelled like travel, and existed outside the regular rules of time, and Jess was focused again, because at the end of this journey, still a whole twenty-four hours and several oceans and continents away, Nora was waiting for her. And the pull toward home was physical and Jess was impatient to be on solid ground again, on the other side.

People who grow up in old houses come to understand that buildings have characters. That they have memories and secrets to tell. One must merely learn to listen, and then to comprehend, as with any language.

The ever-present history, the tangible layers of time wherever one cared to look, was an aspect of London that she still found deeply stimulating, even after almost twenty years. Wouldn’t it be something, she’d thought, to pick a street at random and interview the current residents of each home, weaving their present-day situations together with whatever she could learn about the previous occupants and, indeed,