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61 " If Enola is right and there isn’t a curse, if we are just a sad family, the sort that’s chemically unable to stay alive, if we drown ourselves for that reason, then my sister just told me there’s nothing I can do for her. That is not a possibility. Near "
― Erika Swyler , The Book of Speculation
62 " Maybe we’re just sad, she said, as though she is deeply sad. Always women. Drowned women make a paper river on my desk. No mention of a single son. Lovers, bereaved husbands, aggrieved fathers abound, but a son? A brother? No, only me. I am an anomaly. While she continually shuffles cards and defaces my already damaged book. How did it become so ruined? The "
63 " A heavy volume, Binding Charms and Defixione has an almost sinister look to it, a thick black leather binding, title embossed but not gilded, the pages soft with years of oil from fingertips of the curious. I touched it and felt almost the same shiver I had when touching the book—our book. I’ll sit with it once my head is clear. "
64 " The trouble with Evangeline started long before Amos saw her in a lightening field. The trouble was that she’d been born. "
65 " It’s on the water and at night the lights from Connecticut shine across the harbor like they’re crying. "
66 " I wait. A broken spring in the seat pokes my back, scratching a reminder of something. Three of Swords, a heart triple pierced. Eight of Swords, the man stabbed in the back, run straight through. I don’t remember all the cards that were in the book and my sister eliminated any ability to check, but I’m sure some of them just appeared in her reading. Everything is getting mixed up. My mother moved back and forth between Frank and my father, and Frank has things I’ve seen in pages of my family history. Enola and Doyle are passing cards, sharing fates and futures, like ink bleeding down a wet page—the ruined end of a book. A "
67 " Frank is in my house with my books, like he’s sitting in my veins. "
68 " He hoped, foolishly perhaps, but he’d always loved the Fool. Amos "
69 " The sun is high, a bright bullet above the water. I tell him about the menagerie, about a Russian woman and a deck of orange cards, and how when you touch them you leave a piece of yourself behind, how these pieces work like a curse and the thoughts they contain seep into you like venom, how sometimes you hold on to things because you're searching for someone in them, someone you want desperately to love you. How the very best intentions kill us. "
70 " Books have a way of causing ripples. "
71 " She knows that her name will find its way into his speculations. So will his. Because there are things you do for people you've known your whole life. You let them save you, you put them in your books, and you let each other begin again, clean. "
72 " My head is exploding and my eyes feel like I spent hours in the wind. If it’s possible to have a reading hangover, I have one. "
73 " A trigger point for a curse may be hard to find, but if it’s there, then there’s a chance to break it. There is no stopping sadness. Sadness slips through the fingers. Frank "
74 " it was rare enough to be cared for that it should not be taken lightly. He "
75 " …sometimes you hold on to things because you’re searching for someone in them, someone you desperately want to love you. "
76 " We love books because we deeply love people. "
77 " It’s a small piece of awfulness. "
78 " If it's possible to grind coffee sadly, this is what she's doing. "
79 " I was thinking about books, and libraries, and how they saved my life. "
80 " My breath fractures into a fine mist over my skin. "