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"I don’t kno to be e see her," Rhage said "I mean, you kno to be normal"

"I don’t either"

They’d decided itup What if he turned out to be a faker? How cruel would that be? And yet … hoere they going to pretend to Bitty that everything was fine and nothing unusual was going on?

That was going to require acting skills far out of her league

Mary’s stoht after she had read that private ot even worse as they started up theto coel, which she’d had at First Meal hours before, into a ceray oyles and its countless s and its towering, monolithic mass, she felt like she couldn’t breathe

"Take your tio around the winterized fountain in the center of the courtyard "God …"

He eased in between Qhuinn’s second Huhts Even undid his seat belt But neither of theet out They just stared ahead, at the rolling, snow-dusted lawn that dipped down to the edge of the forest … at the drop to the valley below … at the show of stars above

There was so liness that she felt prepared to deal with And by that, she didn’t edy or disease or loss up close and personal But she at least had frames of reference for all of that

This?

Well, life was just full of surprises, wasn’t it

And all things considered, she would have rather learned inning the lottery was like Orpresident of the United States

But not this bungee cord of learning she wasn’t ever going to be aall of that taken away

Potentially taken away, she reminded herself

Plus on top of that, Bitty was in a da from what they’d had to do to her at Havers’s

"Coether and reunited at the trunk of thehis arm around her shoulders As they came up to the fountain, she was sad that it had been all drained and tarped up: The gentle fall of the sparkling water was so she had come to associate with home But winter in upstate New York did not offer the kind of climate where you wanted exposed exterior pipes to be full of H2O, even if the syste