ash’s Reviews > Whidbey > Status Update

“Syl walks the gravel road, the one that will lead her to the rest of her life, and the one that leads to her past (sometimes, these roads are the same).”

“the ways in which the natural world - and some people in it - will hold you and mend you if you trust them with the task”

“she would find that the healing thing is as abundant and near as the thing that hurts”

“the spiraled seashell of her past, her future- both felt equally fixed”

“They were limber, unbothered, and Syl was jealous; when you were young, drinking could still be charming. Life could still be possible”

“It’s not that she hasn’t remembered; it’s that she’s good at it- the not remembering. And nobody has ever been close enough to hold her memories, to care for them”

“to seek true progression is to seek freedom”

“They’re interested.
In me?
In what happened to you.”

“Her mom flooded back to her. This was not the way she liked to remember her mom’s voice. This was not the pot-roast fantasy, but the real tone of her mother outside the courthouse: You’ll pay for what men do your whole fucking life. Linzie had tried so hard not to believe her.”

“You’re a woman in mourning, Syl said. You don’t leave a mother in mourning, all alone in her house.

Mary-Beth wondered what was waiting for her, in that aloneness. She felt something was.”