Krystle’s Reviews > Hollow Bones > Status Update

428 “Think of someone you’ve lost.
You think you would trade anything to hear their voice again, or to see their smile. To hold them, or be held by them, just one more time.
You would be right.”

428 “In the field of emergency preparedness, the reason we celebrate survivors is not because of the one tragic day they persevered, but because of all the ordinary days that they still have to come. How you died defines you for a moment. How you lived… well, that defines you forever.”

427-428 “It’s to preserve the moments in between. To make sure people have the space & the safety to be intentional, so those days aren’t wasted. I think of the weeks I pushed Georgia away because I was so angry when she first returned. Well, I will never get that time back.”

427 “Here’s my dirty little secret: I could be the best chief of Emergency Preparedness in the country—in the world—but tragedies will still happen. Floods rise. Planes crash. People die. Nothing I do, nothing, can ever stop catastrophes from coming. But that’s not why I do it.”

424 “Gotta go,” Gavin mutters. “Sorry, man. Some asshole ran a red light, hit a pedestrian, & crashed into a Jersey barrier.” … But before I can finish typing, the phone begins to ring. Molly’s profile picture glows on the screen. “Jesse.” Molly’s voice is wet, hitched, incoherent. “They’re taking her to the hospital.” “My mother.”

421 Georgia went walking on her own for some fresh air. After she was done, Molly texted Georgia that she & Adie are at a Starbucks near the hotel. “Across the street, Molly stands up & waves. I wave back. The Walk signal turns, & I take that first step, momentarily blinded by the sun, or maybe by my future.”

407 “I draw myself up from the love seat. “Goodbye, Evie,” I say, walking toward the front door. Her voice stops me. “He loved me, you know.” It was what she had always wanted, & even if it wasn’t intentional or deliberate, it was what she had finally gotten. I do not look back as I reach the front door of a house that might have once been mine, & I firmly close that door behind me.”

406-407 Evie is packing when Georgia shows up @ the house. “We [Adam & Evie] agreed that I’d move out by the weekend.”
G: “Where are you going to go?”
E: “Who knows. It’s not like I’ve ever had a family whose arms I could go running back to, is it?” … “You know, I thought of you like a sister.”
Sisters before misters.
“You lied first, Eloise. You & me against the world? Bullshit.”

405 “I think we all evolve over the course of our lives. We are a child, an adult, a parent. We painstakingly remake ourselves from students into professionals. We accumulate labels: daughter, wife, widow, orphan. We become mirrors for some people, & magnets for others. We get polished & sanded by our encounters w/ the world. Nobody leaves this life the same way they started.”