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41 " I turn back to the moon, wishing away every sharp and dangerous thing that has ever threatened my vulnerable heart. "
― Julie Cantrell , Perennials
42 " ...there is no reason to fear the changing seasons. "
43 " He just went ahead to hold the door for me is all. "
44 " If only I could have realized the truth years ago. But now I know. And now I see. Love is what strengthens and remains of me. "
45 " For the moment, Jack remained the kind of man who would bring someone a drink just to make her happy. Not because it was expected, but because it was a nice thing to do. "
― Julie Cantrell , Into the Free
46 " In moments like that, I thought Mama might be right. That Jack wasn’t all bad, and that somewhere, deep down inside of him, we were a family. "
47 " Maybe it will help to think of it this way. Let’s say you have a disease. You live every day in pain, suffering, even in your sleep. You could be in this kind of pain for the rest of your life. No way to numb it. This is not a bearable pain. It’s the unbearable kind. The kind that makes people want to pull their own abscessed tooth. "
― Julie Cantrell , The Feathered Bone
48 " Ryan’s case, the root of the pain was his own brain. An imbalanced chemical reaction. It had nothing at all to do with how many Sundays he sat in those pews. It was an illness. He died from that disease just as others die from cancer or pneumonia. "
49 " I keep telling the Big Man upstairs I won’t be able to manage much longer, but he keeps on giving me another day, another day. Can’t for the life of me figure out what else he needs me to do down here. "
50 " My name is on the prayer list every week, which means families like Diana’s are talking about me over supper, lifting me up to the heavens. The rodeo-trash half-breed. "
51 " Their joy slowly fills the black gaps in my soul. Like river water rising. "
52 " I imagine Marlin Perkins narrating the scene on my favorite childhood television show, Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom. "
53 " I feel my anger rising. The Jack Mr. Tucker is talking about had never lived at my house. Jack must have put on a show for his boss, the doting father who missed his family. "
54 " Mrs. Talbot’s voice carries like a freight train. Her words have the same dirty impact as a load of coal. I imagine Diana smiling, trying not to show her ignorance, and longing to know the rest of the story. "
55 " I spend a good ten minutes pulling and tugging on Jack’s ax, trying to work it back out of my tree. But once it finally gives free, I realize the scars are there for good. "
56 " Sophie is the kind who calls our town Millerville. Too good to let a Choctaw word touch her tongue. "
57 " I swing the broom back and forth across Sloth’s dusty floor and I spill my secrets, one by one. River leans against Sloth’s chair and I bring him back in time with me, through the dog-eared pages of my tattered life. "
58 " By some miracle, my grandmother defies his command and opens the door anyway. We stare at our own brown eyes and black curls, hers with silver streaks laced throughout, mine in tangles. I remember all the times we’ve accidentally passed each other on Main Street or in front of Tanson Theater. She always turned away. Now she looks at me, and I feel as if I am meeting myself, forty years from now, and she is facing an image of her wild-eyed past. "
59 " The smell of my grandfather’s chicory coffee slides under the door. My grandmother’s slippered steps skim the wooden beams like hushed secrets. "