Madi’s Reviews > The Vanishing Half > Status Update

The white shotgun house appeared, looking the same as she’d remembered, which seemed wrong since her grandmother would not be sitting on the porch to greet them. Her death hit in waves. Not a flood, but water lapping steadily at her ankles.

You could drown in two inches of water. Maybe grief was the same.

“But I could never tell my mother any of this,” she said. “She’d just say that she was right. She cares more about being right than being my mother. Sometimes I don’t even think she likes me very much. Isn’t that something? To think your own mother can’t even stand you.”

“I don’t know why you’re fighting it neither. What could be better than being eighteen and in love? Oh, you don’t even know. If I could go back, I’d do everything different.”
“Like what?” she said.
“Oh, everything.” He turned back to the mirror. “This big ol’ world and we only get to go through it once. The saddest thing there is, you ask me.”

This was his gift, a short memory. A long memory could drive a man crazy.

The idea hadn’t been Stella’s at all—during that final summer, it was Desiree who’d decided to run away after the picnic. Which should not have been surprising, perhaps. Hadn’t she, for years, told anyone who would listen that she couldn’t wait to leave Mallard? Mostly she’d told Stella, who indulged her with the patience of a girl long used to hearing delusions.