Paper Over The Cracks Quotes

Spread on your bravery, line the eyes and the lips,” I say under my breath as I write on the paper, “glue up the cracks and paint over the rips.” I

Leave the dishes. Let the celery rot in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator and an earthen scum harden on the kitchen floor. Leave the black crumbs in the bottom of the toaster. Throw the cracked bowl out and don't patch the cup. Don't patch anything. Don't mend. Buy safety pins. Don't even sew on a button. Let the wind have its way, then the earth that invades as dust and then the dead foaming up in gray rolls underneath the couch. Talk to them. Tell them they are welcome. Don't keep all the pieces of the puzzles or the doll's tiny shoes in pairs, don't worry who uses whose toothbrush or if anything matches, at all. Except one word to another. Or a thought. Pursue the authentic-decide first what is authentic, then go after it with all your heart. Your heart, that place you don't even think of cleaning out. That closet stuffed with savage mementos. Don't sort the paper clips from screws from saved baby teeth or worry if we're all eating cereal for dinner again. Don't answer the telephone, ever, or weep over anything at all that breaks. Pink molds will grow within those sealed cartons in the refrigerator. Accept new forms of life and talk to the dead who drift in though the screened windows, who collect patiently on the tops of food jars and books. Recycle the mail, don't read it, don't read anything except what destroys the insulation between yourself and your experience or what pulls down or what strikes at or what shatters this ruse you call necessity.

I'm not going to tell you how I think you should live your life, or what I think you should do," said Mary. "Now's not the time. But I will say this: Don't try to paper over things that matter, Laura. The cracks will appear. Maybe not immediately, but they will.

As he helped her prepare, the sky darkened beyond the cracked-open window. The distant urban melody of wheels rattling over cobblestone, urchins hawking the evening paper, and church bells sonorously pealing the hour mingled with the muted conversations of guests passing in the hall outside.

Ingenuity is often misunderstood. It is not a matter of superior intelligence but of character. It demands more than anything a willingness to recognize failure, to not paper over the cracks, and to change. It arises from deliberate, even obsessive, reflection on failure and a constant searching for new solutions.

W e should not be scared of being confrontational, of facing people with the wrong that they have done. Forgiving doesn’t mean turning yourself into a doormat for people to wipe their boots on. Our Lord was very forgiving. But he faced up to those he thought were self-righteous, who were behaving in a ghastly fashion, and called them a “generation of vipers” (Matthew 23:33, KJV). Forgiveness doesn’t mean pretending things aren’t as they really are. Forgiveness is a recognition that there is a ghastliness that has happened. Forgiveness doesn’t mean trying to paper over the cracks. Forgiveness means that both the wronged and the culprits of those wrongs acknowledge that something happened. There is necessarily a measure of confrontation. People sometimes think that you shouldn’t be abrasive. But sometimes you have to be to make people acknowledge that they have done something wrong.

What is a Gallagher Girl?” Liz asked. She looked nervously down at the papers in her hand even though I knew for a fact she had memorized every word. “When I was eleven I thought I knew the answer to that question. That was when the recruiters came to see me. They showed me brochures and told me they were impressed by my test scores and asked if I was ready to be challenged. And I said yes. Because that was what a Gallagher Girl was to me then, a student at the toughest school in the world.” She took a deep breath and talked on. “What is a Gallagher Girl?” Liz asked again. “When I was thirteen I thought I knew the answer to that question. That was when Dr. Fibs allowed me to start doing my own experiments in the lab. I could go anywhere—make anything. Do anything my mind could dream up. Because I was a Gallagher Girl. And, to me, that meant I was the future.” Liz took another deep breath. “What is a Gallagher Girl?” This time, when Liz asked it, her voice cracked. “When I was seventeen I stood on a dark street in Washington, D.C., and watched one Gallagher Girl literally jump in front of a bullet to save the life of another. I saw a group of women gather around a girl whom they had never met, telling the world that if any harm was to come to their sister, it had to go through them first.” Liz straightened. She no longer had to look down at her paper as she said, “What is a Gallagher Girl? I’m eighteen now, and if I’ve learned anything, it’s that I don’t really know the answer to that question. Maybe she is destined to be our first international graduate and take her rightful place among Her Majesty’s Secret Service with MI6.” I glanced to my right and, call me crazy, but I could have sworn Rebecca Baxter was crying. “Maybe she is someone who chooses to give back, to serve her life protecting others just as someone once protected her.” Macey smirked but didn’t cry. I got the feeling that Macey McHenry might never cry again. “Who knows?” Liz asked. “Maybe she’s an undercover journalist.” I glanced at Tina Walters. “An FBI agent.” Eva Alvarez beamed. “A code breaker.” Kim Lee smiled. “A queen.” I thought of little Amirah and knew somehow that she’d be okay. “Maybe she’s even a college student.” Liz looked right at me. “Or maybe she’s so much more.” Then Liz went quiet for a moment. She too looked up at the place where the mansion used to stand. “You know, there was a time when I thought that the Gallagher Academy was made of stone and wood, Grand Halls and high-tech labs. When I thought it was bulletproof, hack-proof, and…yes…fireproof. And I stand before you today happy for the reminder that none of those things are true. Yes, I really am. Because I know now that a Gallagher Girl is not someone who draws her power from that building. I know now with scientific certainty that it is the other way around.” A hushed awe descended over the already quiet crowd as she said this. Maybe it was the gravity of her words and what they meant, but for me personally, I like to think it was Gilly looking down, smiling at us all. “What is a Gallagher Girl?” Liz asked one final time. “She’s a genius, a scientist, a heroine, a spy. And now we are at the end of our time at school, and the one thing I know for certain is this: A Gallagher Girl is whatever she wants to be.” Thunderous, raucous applause filled the student section. Liz smiled and wiped her eyes. She leaned close to the microphone. “And, most of all, she is my sister.

He gave it its present name, and lived here shut up: day and night poring over the wicked heaps of papers in the suit, and hoping against hope to disentangle it from its mystification and bring it to a close. In the meantime, the place became dilapidated, the wind whistled through the cracked walls, the rain fell through the broken roof, the weeds choked the passage to the rotting door. When I brought what remained of him home here, the brains seemed to me to have been blown out of the house too; it was so shattered and ruined.

[The Devil] "This legend is about paradise. There was, they say, a certain thinker and philospher here on your earth, who 'rejected all--laws, conscience faith, and, above all, the future life. He died and thought he'd go straight into darkness and death, but no--there was the future life before him. He was amazed and indignant. 'This,' he said, 'goes against my convictions.' So for that he was sentenced...I mean, you see, I beg your pardon, I'm repeating what I heard, it's just a legend...you see, he was sentenced to walk in darkness a quadrillion kilometers (we also use kilometers now), and once he finished that quadrillion, the doors of paradise would be open to him and he would be forgiven everything...Well, so this man sentenced to the quadrillion stood a while, looked, and then lay down across the road: 'I dont want to go, I refuse to go on principle!' Take the soul of an enlightened Russian atheist and mix it with the soul of the prophet Jonah, who sulked in the belly of a whale for three days and three nights--you'll get the character of this thinker lying in the road...He lay there for nearly a thousand years, and then got up and started walking." "What an ass!" Ivan exclaimed, bursting into nervous laughter, still apparently trying hard to figure something out. "isn't it all the same whether he lies there forever or walks a quadrillion kilometers? It must be about a billion years' walk!" "Much more, even. If we had a pencil and paper, we could work it out. But he arrived long ago, and this is where the anecdote begins." "Arrived! But where did he get a billion years?" "You keep thinking about our present earth! But our present earth may have repeated itself a billion times; it died out, lets say, got covered with ice, cracked, fell to pieces, broke down into its original components, again there were the waters above the firmament, then again a comet, again the sun, again the earth from the sun--all this development may already have been repeated an infinite number of times, and always in the same way, to the last detail. A most unspeakable bore... "Go on, what happened when he arrived?" "The moment the doors of paradise were opened and he went in, before he had even been there two seconds--and that by the watch--before he had been there two seconds, he exclaimed that for those two seconds it would be worth walking not just a quadrillion kilometers, but a quadrillion quadrillion, even raised to the quadrillionth power! In short, he sang 'Hosannah' and oversweetened it so much that some persons there, of a nobler cast of mind, did not even want to shake hands with him at first: he jumped over to the conservatives a bit too precipitously. The Russian character. I repeat: it's a legend.

Dinah O’Halloran is seated beneath a large painting of a nude woman. The model’s golden hair is down and she’s looking over her shoulder, green eyes narrowed seductively at the viewer. It…oh my God. The woman’s face is Dinah’s. “Do you like it?” Dinah asks with raised eyebrows. “I have others in the house but this is the most conservative.” Conservative? Lady, I can see your ass crack in the picture. “It’s

What if, on some level, way down deep inside, right down to the very simplest, purified form of who he was, what if he was corrupted? What if there was some tiny, tiny fault in the first building blocks of who he was, and everything since that moment of life was just papering over an essential crack? And he was just a carapace built on a facade built on scaffolding and there was no real core to him, no real central worth? At all?

She’d entered a city made entirely of leather and paper. Celaena put a hand against her heart. Escape routes be damned. “I’ve never seen—how many volumes are there?” Chaol shrugged. “The last time anyone bothered to count, it was a million. But that was two hundred years ago. I’d say maybe more than that, especially given the legends that a second library lies deep beneath, in catacombs and tunnels.” “Over a million? A million books?” Her heart leapt and danced, and she cracked a smile. “I’d die before I even got through half of that!” “You like to read?” She raised an eyebrow. “Don’t you?” Not waiting for an answer, she moved farther into the library, the train of her gown sweeping across the floor. She neared a shelf and looked at the titles. She recognized none of them. Grinning, she whirled and moved through the main floor, running a hand across the dusty books.

And again it snowed, and again the sun came out. In the mornings on the way to the station Franklin counted the new snowmen that had sprung up mysteriously overnight or the old ones that had been stricken with disease and lay cracked apart--a head here, a broken body and three lumps of coal there--and one day he looked up from a piece of snow-colored rice paper and knew he was done. It was as simple as that: you bent over your work night after night, and one day you were done. Snow still lay in dirty streaks on the ground but clusters of yellow-green flowers hung from the sugar maples.

I Never Told You You can fill a book with everything I never said Or the lines of a poem Or an Empty pool Or an empty bedroom, the candles all blown out I never told you how the reflection of myself in your eyes Was the only mirror I could bear to look at Or how I fought every day To transfuse the girl I saw there with the girl I am I tried to breathe in the words you made me: beautiful good brave I tried to be them for you even though they were weighted with impossibility I never told you how I always feared the rough edges of myself were too sharp for you and how I fought everyday to blunt them To bring down the walls To let you in without cutting you because I could never bear to hurt you like the others did Every day a fierce pride roared in me I was so lucky to know the truth I was the beneficiary of your radiance I basked in it and felt special And if not for the pain of your solitude I would have been content to be the only one I never told you How your touch made me feel like laughing and crying and singing all at once How your hand passing over my skin where atrocities Had not yet sloughed off, Skin cells remembering the worst touches Was like a tide washing over the ruddy sand And leaving it whole and smooth You made my skin forget Gave me new memories New sensations that didn't drag the shadows from the past In your arms I could start again, Start over. There is no greater gift in all the world Than you to the wreckage that is me... I never told you How I longed to kiss away your every bruise until there was no evidence No ghosts of your own suffering To put your pieces back together Seal the cracks Vanish them like they never were And never, ever Leave a scar I never told you I would take your pain if I could I would drink it down And take my comfort In making you ache a little less For a little while Did I? I'll never know because I never told you that I loved you I love you I love you It's too lat to say it now The time has passed for words How pathetic and small and weak On the phone Or on a piece of paper Starving Without the force of my own vitality My voice My breath My blood singing n my veins for you To give them power They are lost I love you It's too late but I love you And I'm sorry I never told you.

My bones are leather and cardboard, my parchment smells of glue and mildew, and I strut at my ease across a hundredweight of paper. I am reborn, I have at last become a complete man, thinking, speaking, singing, thundering, and asserting himself with the peremptory inertia of matter. I am taken up, opened out, spread on the table, smoothed with the flat of the hand and sometimes made to crack. I let it happen and then suddenly I flash, dazzle, impose myself from a distance; my powers traverse space and time, strike down the wicked and protect the good. No one can forget me or pass me over in silence: I am a large, manageable, and terrible fetish. My consciousness is in fragments: all the better. Other consciousnesses have taken charge of me. They read me and I leap to their eyes; they talk about me and I am on everyone’s lips, a universal and singular language; I have made myself a prospective interest for millions of glances. For anyone who knows how to like me, I am his most intimate disquiet: but if he wants to touch me, I draw aside and vanish: I exist nowhere but I am, at last! I am everywhere: a parasite on humanity, by my good deeds I prey on it and force it endlessly to revive my absence.

His dark room now seemed cool and restfully confining. You could imagine maps in the wallpaper. The roses had faded into vague shells of pink. Only a few silver lines along the vanished stems and in the veins of leaves, indistinct patches of the palest green remained—the faint suggestion of mysterious geography. A grease spot was a marsh, a mountain or a treasure. Irabestis went boating down a crack on cool days, under the tree boughs, bending his head. He fished in a chip of plaster. The perch rose to the bait and were golden in the sunwater. Specks stood for cities; pencil marks were bridges; stains and shutter patterns laid out fields of wheat and oats and corn. In the shadow of a corner the crack issued into a great sea. There was a tear in the paper that looked exactly like a railway and another that signified a range of hills. Some tiny drops of ink formed a chain of lakes. A darker decorative strip of Grecian pediments and interlacing ivy at the ceiling’s edge kept the tribes of Gog and Magog from invasion. Once he had passed through it to the ceiling but it made him dizzy and afraid. Shadows moved quixotically over the whole wall, usually from left to right in tall thin bands, and sank behind the bureau or below the bed or disappeared suddenly in a corner.

Separately they surveyed their individual plates, trying to decide which item was most likely to be edible. They arrived at the same conclusion at the same moment; both of them picked up a strip of bacon and bit into it. Noisy crunching and cracking sounds ensued-like those of a large tree breaking in half and falling. Carefully avoiding each other’s eyes, they continued crunching away until they’d both eaten all the bacon on their plates. That finished, Elizabeth summoned her courage and took a dainty bite of egg. The egg tasted like tough, salted wrapping paper, but Elizabeth chewed manfully on it, her stomach churning with humiliation and a lump of tears starting to swell in her throat. She expected some scathing comment at any moment from her companion, and the more politely he continued eating, the more she wished he’d revert to his usual unpleasant self so that she’d at least have the defense of anger. Lately everything that happened to her was humiliating, and her pride and confidence were in tatters. Leaving the egg unfinished, she put down her fork and tried the biscuit. After several seconds of attempting to break a piece off with her fingers she picked up her knife and sawed away at it. A brown piece finally broke loose; she lifted it to her mouth and bit-but it was so tough her teeth only made grooves on the surface. Across the table she felt Ian’s eyes on her, and the urge to weep doubled. “Would you like some coffee?” she asked in a suffocated little voice. “Yes, thank you.” Relieved to have a moment to compose herself, Elizabeth arose and went to the stove, but her eyes blurred with tears as she blindly filled a mug with freshly brewed coffee. She brought it over to him, then sat down again. Sliding a glance at the defeated girl sitting with her head bent and her hands folded in her lap, Ian felt a compulsive urge to either laugh or comfort her, but since chewing was requiring such an effort, he couldn’t do either. Swallowing the last piece of egg, he finally managed to say, “That was…er…quite filling.” Thinking perhaps he hadn’t found it so bad as she had, Elizabeth hesitantly raised her eyes to his. “I haven’t had a great deal of experience with cooking,” she admitted in a small voice. She watched him take a mouthful of coffee, saw his eyes widen with shock-and he began to chew the coffee. Elizabeth lurched to her feet, squired her shoulders, and said hoarsely, “I always take a stroll after breakfast. Excuse me.” Still chewing, Ian watched her flee from the house, then he gratefully got rid of the mouthful of coffee grounds.

Kekulé dreams the Great Serpent holding its own tail in its mouth, the dreaming Serpent which surrounds the World. But the meanness, the cynicism with which this dream is to be used. The Serpent that announces, "The World is a closed thing, cyclical, resonant, eternally-returning," is to be delivered into a system whose only aim is to violate the Cycle. Taking and not giving back, demanding that "productivity" and "earnings" keep on increasing with time, the System removing from the rest of the World these vast quantities of energy to keep its own tiny desperate fraction showing a profit: and not only most of humanity—most of the World, animal, vegetable, and mineral, is laid waste in the process. The System may or may not understand that it's only buying time. And that time is an artificial resource to begin with, of no value to anyone or anything but the System, which must sooner or later crash to its death, when its addiction to energy has become more than the rest of the World can supply, dragging with it innocent souls all along the chain of life. Living inside the System is like riding across the country in a bus driven by a maniac bent on suicide . . . though he's amiable enough, keeps cracking jokes back through the loudspeaker . . . on you roll, across a countryside whose light is forever changing--castles, heaps of rock, moons of different shapes and colors come and go. There are stops at odd hours of teh mornings, for reasons that are not announced: you get out to stretch in lime-lit courtyards where the old men sit around the table under enormous eucalyptus trees you can smell in the night, shuffling the ancient decks oily and worn, throwing down swords and cups and trumps major in the tremor of light while behind them the bus is idling, waiting--"passengers will now reclaim their seats" and much as you'd like to stay, right here, learn the game, find your old age around this quiet table, it's no use: he is waiting beside the door of the bus in his pressed uniform, Lord of the Night he is checking your tickets, your ID and travel papers, and it's the wands of enterprise that dominate tonight...as he nods you by, you catch a glimpse of his face, his insane, committed eyes, and you remember then, for a terrible few heartbeats, that of course it will end for you all in blood, in shock, without dignity--but there is meanwhile this trip to be on ... over your own seat, where there ought to be an advertising plaque, is instead a quote from Rilke: "Once, only once..." One of Their favorite slogans. No return, no salvation, no Cycle--that's not what They, nor Their brilliant employee Kekule, have taken the Serpent to mean.

Cribbage!” I declared, pulling out the board, a deck of cards, and pen and paper, “Ben and I are going to teach you. Then we can all play.” “What makes you think I don’t know how to play cribbage?” Sage asked. “You do?” Ben sounded surprised. “I happen to be an excellent cribbage player,” Sage said. “Really…because I’m what one might call a cribbage master,” Ben said. “I bet I’ve been playing longer than you,” Sage said, and I cast my eyes his way. Was he trying to tell u something? “I highly doubt that,” Ben said, “but I believe we’ll see the proof when I double-skunk you.” “Clearly you’re both forgetting it’s a three-person game, and I’m ready to destroy you both,” I said. “Deal ‘em,” Ben said. Being a horse person, my mother was absolutely convinced she could achieve world peace if she just got the right parties together on a long enough ride. I didn’t know about that, but apparently cribbage might do the trick. I didn’t know about that, but apparently cribbage might do the trick. The three of us were pretty evenly matched, and Ben was impressed enough to ask sage how he learned to play. Turned out Sage’s parents were historians, he said, so they first taught him the precursor to cribbage, a game called noddy. “Really?” Ben asked, his professional curiosity piqued. “Your parents were historians? Did they teach?” “European history. In Europe,” Sage said. “Small college. They taught me a lot.” Yep, there was the metaphorical gauntlet. I saw the gleam in Ben’s eye as he picked it up. “Interesting,” he said. “So you’d say you know a lot about European history?” “I would say that. In fact, I believe I just did.” Ben grinned, and immediately set out to expose Sage as an intellectual fraud. He’d ask questions to trip Sage up and test his story, things I had no idea were tests until I heard Sage’s reactions. “So which of Shakespeare’s plays do you think was better served by the Globe Theatre: Henry VIII or Troilus and Cressida?” Ben asked, cracking his knuckles. “Troilus and Cressida was never performed at the Globe,” Sage replied. “As for Henry VIII, the original Globe caught fire during the show and burned to the ground, so I’d say that’s the show that really brought down the house…wouldn’t you?” “Nice…very nice.” Ben nodded. “Well done.” It was the cerebral version of bamboo under the fingernails, and while they both tried to seem casual about their conversation, they were soon leaning forward with sweat beading on their brows. It was fascinating…and weird. After several hours of this, Ben had to admit that he’d found a historical peer, and he gleefully involved Sage in all kinds of debates about the minutiae of eras I knew nothing about…except that I had the nagging sense I might have been there for some of them. For his part, Sage seemed to relish talking about the past with someone who could truly appreciate the detailed anecdotes and stories he’d discovered in his “research.” By the time we started our descent to Miami, the two were leaning over my seat to chat and laugh together. On the very full flight from Miami to New York, Ben and Sage took the two seats next to each other and gabbed and giggled like middle-school girls. I sat across from them stuck next to an older woman wearing far too much perfume.

Excerpt from Storm’s Eye by Dean Gray With a final drag and drop, Jordan Rayne sent his latest creation winging its way toward the publisher. He looked up, squinted at that little clock in the right hand corner of his monitor, and removed his glasses to rub the bridge of his nose. His cover art was finished and shipped, just in time for lunch. He sighed and stood, rolling his shoulders and bending side to side, his back cracking in protest as the muscles loosened after having been hunched over the screen for so long. Sam raised his head, tilting it enquiringly at him, and Jordan laughed. “Yeah, I know what you want, some lunch and a nice long walk along the beach, hmm?” Jordan smiled fondly at the furry ball of energy he’d saved from certain death. With his mom’s recent death it was just Sam and him in the house. Sometimes he wondered what kept him here, now that the last thread tethering him to the island was severed. Sam limped over and nuzzled at his hand. When Jordan had first found him out on the main road, hurt and bleeding, he hadn’t been sure the pooch would make it. Taylor, his best friend and the local vet, had done what she could. At the time, Jordan simply didn’t have the deep pockets for the fancy surgery needed to mend Sam’s leg perfectly, he could barely afford the drugs to keep his mom in treatment. So they’d patched him up as well as they could, Taylor extending herself further than he could ever repay, and hoped for the best. The dog had made a startling recovery, urged on by plenty of rest and good food and lots of love, and had flourished, the slight limp now barely noticeable. Jordan’s conscience still twinged as he watched Sam limp over to his dish, but he had barely been keeping things together at the time. He had done the best he could. He’d done his best to find Sam’s real owners as well, papering downtown Bar Harbor with a hand-drawn sketch of the dog, but to no avail. The only thing it had prompted was one kind soul wanting to buy the illustration. But no one had ever come forward to claim the “goldendoodle,” which Taylor had told him was a golden retriever/standard poodle cross. Who had a dog breed like that anyway? Summer people! Jordan shook his head, grinning at the dog’s foolish antics, weaving in and around his legs like he was still a little pup instead of the fifty-pound fuzzball he actually was now. So without meaning to at all, Sam had drifted into Jordan’s life and stayed, a loyal, faithful companion.

I cast my gangly body into the shadow of the stable and watched them, curious to see my uncle with a triumphant smile on his mouth. He called for Jedha, the Master-at-Arms, and they spoke in low, swift voices before turning in to the house. I stayed in the shadows and trailed them through the hall into the mahogany library, the wooden doors left slightly ajar. I can’t remember what they said to one another—how my uncle had gotten the Providence Card away from the highwaymen—only that they were consumed with excitement. I waited for them to leave, my uncle fool enough not to lock the Card away, and I stole into the heart of the room. Writ on the top of the Card were two words: The Nightmare. My mouth opened, my childish eyes round. I knew enough of The Old Book of Alders to know this particular Providence Card was one of only two of its kind, its magic formidable, fearsome. Use it, and one had the power to speak into the minds of others. Use it too long, and the Card would reveal one’s darkest fears. But it wasn’t the Card’s reputation that ensnared me—it was the monster. I stood over the desk, unable to tear my eyes away from the ghastly creature depicted on the Card’s face. Its fur was coarse, traveling across its limbs and down its hunched spine to the top of its bristled tail. Its fingers were eerily long, hairless and gray, tipped by great, vicious claws. Its face was neither man nor beast, but something in between. I leaned closer to the Card, drawn by the creature’s snarl, its teeth jagged beneath a curled lip. Its eyes captured me. Yellow, bright as a torch, slit by long, catlike pupils. The creature stared up at me, unmoving, unblinking, and though it was made of ink and paper, I could not shake the feeling it was watching me as intently as I was watching it. Trying to grasp what happened next was like mending a shattered mirror. Even if I could realign the pieces, cracks in my memory still remained. All I’m certain of was the feel of the burgundy velvet—the unbelievable softness along the ridges of the Nightmare Card as my finger slipped across it. I remember the smell of salt and the white-hot pain that followed. I must have fallen or fainted, because it was dark outside when I awoke on the library floor. The hair on the back of my neck bristled, and when I sat up, I was somehow aware I was no longer alone in the library. That’s when I first heard it, the sound of those long, vicious claws tapping together. Click. Click. Click. I jumped to my feet, searching the library for an intruder. But I was alone. It wasn’t until it happened again—click, click, click—that I realized the library was empty. The intruder was in my mind.

BACON, EGG, AND CHEDDAR CHEESE TOAST CUPS Preheat oven to 400 degrees F., rack in the middle position. 6 slices bacon (regular sliced, not thick sliced) 4 Tablespoons (2 ounces, ½ stick) salted butter, softened 6 slices soft white bread ½ cup grated cheddar cheese 6 large eggs Salt and pepper to taste Cook the 6 slices of bacon in a frying pan over medium heat for 6 minutes or until the bacon is firmed up and the edges are slightly brown, but the strips are still pliable. They won’t be completely cooked, but that’s okay. They will finish cooking in the oven. Place the partially-cooked bacon on a plate lined with paper towels to drain it. Generously coat the inside of 6 muffin cups with half of the softened butter. Butter one side of the bread with the rest of the butter but stop slightly short of the crusts. Lay the bread out on a sheet of wax paper or a bread board butter side up. Hannah’s 1st Note: You will be wasting a bit of butter here, but it’s easier than cutting rounds of bread first and trying to butter them after they’re cut. Using a round cookie cutter that’s three and a half inches (3 and ½ inches) in diameter, cut circles out of each slice of bread.   Hannah’s 2nd Note: If you don’t have a 3.5 inch cookie cutter, you can use the top rim of a standard size drinking glass to do this. Place the bread rounds butter side down inside the muffin pans, pressing them down gently being careful not to tear them as they settle into the bottom of the cup. If one does tear, cut a patch from the buttered bread that is left and place it, buttered side down, over the tear. Curl a piece of bacon around the top of each piece of bread, positioning it between the bread and the muffin tin. This will help to keep the bacon in a ring shape. Sprinkle shredded cheese in the bottom of each muffin cup, dividing the cheese as equally as you can between the 6 muffin cups. Crack an egg into a small measuring cup (I use a half-cup measure) with a spout, making sure to keep the yolk intact. Hannah’s 3rd Note: If you break a yolk, don’t throw the whole egg away. Just slip it in a small covered container which you will refrigerate and use for scrambled eggs the next morning, or for that batch of cookies you’ll make in the next day or two. Pour the egg carefully into the bottom of one of the muffin cups. Repeat this procedure for all the eggs, cracking them one at a time and pouring them into the remaining muffin cups. When every muffin cup has bread, bacon, cheese and egg, season with a little salt and pepper. Bake the filled toast cups for 6 to 10 minutes, depending on how firm you want the yolks. (Naturally, a longer baking time yields a harder yolk.) Run the blade of a knife around the edge of each muffin cup, remove the Bacon, Egg, and Cheddar Cheese Toast Cups, and serve immediately. Hannah’s 4th Note: These are a bit tricky the first time you make them. That’s just “beginner nerves”. Once you’ve made them successfully, they’re really quite easy to do and extremely impressive to serve for a brunch. Yield: 6 servings (or 3 servings if you’re fixing them for Mike and Norman).

I took a shower after dinner and changed into comfortable Christmas Eve pajamas, ready to settle in for a couple of movies on the couch. I remembered all the Christmas Eves throughout my life--the dinners and wrapping presents and midnight mass at my Episcopal church. It all seemed so very long ago. Walking into the living room, I noticed a stack of beautifully wrapped rectangular boxes next to the tiny evergreen tree, which glowed with little white lights. Boxes that hadn’t been there minutes before. “What…,” I said. We’d promised we wouldn’t get each other any gifts that year. “What?” I demanded. Marlboro Man smiled, taking pleasure in the surprise. “You’re in trouble,” I said, glaring at him as I sat down on the beige Berber carpet next to the tree. “I didn’t get you anything…you told me not to.” “I know,” he said, sitting down next to me. “But I don’t really want anything…except a backhoe.” I cracked up. I didn’t even know what a backhoe was. I ran my hand over the box on the top of the stack. It was wrapped in brown paper and twine--so unadorned, so simple, I imagined that Marlboro Man could have wrapped it himself. Untying the twine, I opened the first package. Inside was a pair of boot-cut jeans. The wide navy elastic waistband was a dead giveaway: they were made especially for pregnancy. “Oh my,” I said, removing the jeans from the box and laying them out on the floor in front of me. “I love them.” “I didn’t want you to have to rig your jeans for the next few months,” Marlboro Man said. I opened the second box, and then the third. By the seventh box, I was the proud owner of a complete maternity wardrobe, which Marlboro Man and his mother had secretly assembled together over the previous couple of weeks. There were maternity jeans and leggings, maternity T-shirts and darling jackets. Maternity pajamas. Maternity sweats. I caressed each garment, smiling as I imagined the time it must have taken for them to put the whole collection together. “Thank you…,” I began. My nose stung as tears formed in my eyes. I couldn’t imagine a more perfect gift. Marlboro Man reached for my hand and pulled me over toward him. Our arms enveloped each other as they had on his porch the first time he’d professed his love for me. In the grand scheme of things, so little time had passed since that first night under the stars. But so much had changed. My parents. My belly. My wardrobe. Nothing about my life on this Christmas Eve resembled my life on that night, when I was still blissfully unaware of the brewing thunderstorm in my childhood home and was packing for Chicago…nothing except Marlboro Man, who was the only thing, amidst all the conflict and upheaval, that made any sense to me anymore. “Are you crying?” he asked. “No,” I said, my lip quivering. “Yep, you’re crying,” he said, laughing. It was something he’d gotten used to. “I’m not crying,” I said, snorting and wiping snot from my nose. “I’m not.” We didn’t watch movies that night. Instead, he picked me up and carried me to our cozy bedroom, where my tears--a mixture of happiness, melancholy, and holiday nostalgia--would disappear completely.

Two homeless men were asleep on picnic tables. I had become very good at not looking at unpleasant things. I could skip my eyes over any pool of vomit on the train platform, any broken junkie lurching toward the concrete, any woman who screamed at her crying baby, even the couples fighting at their tables at the restaurant, women crying into fettuccine, twirling their wedding bands - what being a fifty-one percenter had taught me was not to let any shock shake my composure. One of the homeless men, in the layers of colorless clothes, was faced away from me on his side. His pants were half down, a piece of shit-covered toilet paper sticking out of his ass crack like a surrender flag. One of his tennis shoes had fallen off and lay to the side of the table. I looked at him until I couldn’t anymore. The sun seemed pensive about setting, and instead of the usual transcendental buzz I got from a change of light, I noticed that the rats were shifting within the rocks. I’m beginning to worry, I said to the river. I checked my phone and walked back home.

They caravanned over to 51st Avenue in northwestern Nashville, a small section of town aptly named the Nations. It was across Interstate 40 from Sylvan Park, the mirror image of the state street routes Taylor and Sam used to trace with their parents on pilgrimages to Bobby’s Dairy Dip. The Nations was an upstanding industrial area which quickly gave way to squalor. It was another one of those bizarre Nashville disunions, a forgotten zone in the midst of splendor and plenty. A five-block area dedicated to crime. The police presence was heavy, trying to quell the rampant drug and sex trade. They were losing the battle. Here in this little molecular oasis of misery, the residents operated in the land time forgot. Pay phones outnumbered cell phones and were still prevalent on every street corner, graffiti-painted and piss-filled. Teenagers wandered in baggy pants and cornrows, holding forty-ounce beer cans wrapped in brown paper bags. Crime, negligence, fear, all the horrors of life seeped in under the cracks of their doors in the middle of the night, carrying away their faith in humanity. These people didn’t just distrust the police, they didn’t acknowledge their existence. Justice was meted out behind gas stations and in dirty alleyways, business conducted under broken street lamps and in fetid, unair-conditioned living rooms.

The thing about seasons is that when you’re in one, you can’t believe the others will ever come back. It feels to me like summer has its feet planted far apart and its hands on its hips: I am here. Gardens are full of primary colors, grass sprouts from cracks in the sidewalk, bees fly heavy and low, like you could just reach down and grab one. You can smell the heat trapped in the concrete, that ironed pillowcase smell. Windows are open, and people seem open too—there is no hunching over from the cold, keeping your eyes on the sidewalk, concentrating on getting to where you’re going so you can be warm and not freeze to death. When you pass by someone, you take the time to nod a greeting or even stand and have a little conversation, the sun making a disc of warmth on the top of your head. Curtains move in S-shaped dances from the breeze, or puff out dramatically, then fall straight and still, like they’re denying they did anything. Kids with Kool-Aid mustaches run in and out of the house, banging the screen door and yelling to their mothers, and you can hear the faint voice of their mothers yelling back not to bang the door, how many times does she have to tell them to not bang the door. There is a different weight to the air. People sit on their porches after dinner, reading the paper or sitting idle, their hands behind their heads and their ankles crossed, waiting to see who passes by. There is a low happiness in them that they can’t explain.

Place the frozen hash browns in the bowl of a food processor. Use the steel blade, and process with an on-and-off motion until the potatoes are finely chopped. (If you don’t have a food processor, you don’t have to go out and buy one to make these. Just lay your frozen potatoes out on a cutting board in single layers, and chop them up into much smaller pieces with a chef’s knife.) Leave the potatoes in the food processor (or on the counter) while you… Crack the eggs into a large bowl and beat them with a fork or a wire whip until they’re fluffy. Stir in the grated onion (or the onion powder if you decided to use that), and the salt and pepper. Mix in the cracker crumbs. Let the mixture sit on the counter for at least two minutes to give the crumbs time to swell as they soak up the liquid. If you used a food processor, dump the potatoes on a cutting board. (If you used a chef’s knife, they’re already there.) Blot them with a paper towel to get rid of any moisture. Then add them to the mixture in the bowl, and stir them in. If the mixture in your bowl looks watery, add another Tablespoon of cracker crumbs to thicken it. Wait for the cracker crumbs to swell up, and then stir again. If it’s still too watery, add another Tablespoon of cracker crumbs. The resulting mixture should be thick, like cottage cheese. Place the ¼ stick of butter and the 1/8 cup of olive oil in a large nonstick frying pan. (This may be overkill, but I spray the frying pan with Pam or another nonstick cooking spray before I add the butter and olive oil.) Turn the burner on medium-high heat. Once the oil and butter are hot, use a quarter-cup measure to drop in the batter. Don’t try to get all of the batter out of the measuring cup. Your goal is to make 1/8 cup pancakes, and if you don’t scrape out the batter, that’s approximately what you’ll get. Keep the pancakes about two inches apart, and cover the bottom of the frying pan with them. Flatten them very slightly with a spatula so the potatoes spread out and don’t hump up in the middle. Fry the pancakes until they’re lightly browned on the bottom. That should take 2 to 3 minutes. You can tell by lifting one up with a spatula and peeking, but if it’s not brown and you have to do it again, choose another pancake to lift. Once the bottoms of the pancakes are brown, flip them over with your spatula and fry them another 2 to 3 minutes, or until the other side is brown. Lift out the pancakes and drain them on paper towels. Serve hot off the stove if you can, or keep the pancakes warm by placing them in a pan in a warm oven (the lowest temperature that your oven will go) in single layers between sheets of aluminum foil. Serve with your choice of sour cream, applesauce, cherry sauce, blueberry sauce, or apricot sauce. Yield: Approximately 24 small pancakes, depending on pancake size.

I can't say for certain. I can paper over the cracks for a while, maybe even maintain a facade of affluence, by robbing Peter to pay Paul

I saw a small square of paper, folded over on itself and sealed with a blob of wax from the candle by my bed. Cracking it open, I recognized Kiernan’s hand. Don’t you dare get up until you’re rested! When you are, send one of those message lights and I’ll come. In the meantime, I’ll talk to O., see if she remembers anything about last night. And I’ll find out if anyone saw M. or N. wandering the palace last night. Don’t frown like that! I’ll be sly. I was frowning, I realized, which made me let out an irritated huff of breath. He knew me too well.

With the average tenure of sales directors being three years, it’s not too great a stretch to conclude that they spend their first 12 months finding out what’s broken, the next 12 months papering over the cracks, and the final 12 months shopping their CV for a new job.

SWEAR If this time the eggs don't break, freckling the sidewalk with yolk splatter, coating the coffee and the paper towels, dripping all over my white shoes, I will never again swing the groceries back and forth all the way home from the store, singing and jumping the puddles, until the bag hits my thigh and I hear something inside of it crack.

What’s this?” he asks, sitting forward. I remove the top off the box and take out a pile of pictures. I hand him one. “This is Jacob,” I say. My eyes fill with tears, and I don’t even try to blink them back. I let them fall over my lashes and onto my cheeks. Paul brushes them away, but I really don’t want him to. I want to feel all of this because I have forced myself not to feel it for so very long. “This is when he was born.” I point to the squirmy little ball of red skin and dark hair. Paul looks from me to it. “He looks like you,” he says. I shake my head. “He looks more like his dad, I think.” These fucking tears keep falling. I’m not crying. It’s like someone opened an emotional dam in me and I can’t get it to close. I don’t want it to. “What happened to his dad?” Paul asks. “He died,” I say. I have to stop and clear my throat. “Drug overdose a few years after Jacob was born. I read about it in the paper.” “I’m so sorry.” I sniff. “I am, too.” I feel like I need to explain, and for the first time ever, I want to. “We were young, and we played around with marijuana and stuff. But I cut it all out when I found out I was pregnant with Jacob. He didn’t. He wasn’t able. It was really sad when I couldn’t be with him anymore. I didn’t have anyone else. But I didn’t really have him, either. The drugs had him, you know?” He nods. I hand him more pictures, and he flips through them. I have looked at them so much that they’re dog-eared in places. He holds one up from when Jacob was about three. “You can’t tell me he doesn’t look like you. Look at those eyes! He’s so handsome.” My eyes fill with tears again, but I smile through them. He is perfect. And I should be able to hear someone say so. “Look at that smirk!” Paul cries when he sees the most recent one. “That is so you!” I grin. I guess he’s right. “Where is your family, Friday?” he asks. “I don’t know,” I tell him. I lay my head on his shoulder and watch as he takes in the photos over and over, poring through the stack so he can point out ways that Jacob looks like me. “They kicked me out when I got pregnant. Terminated their rights.” Paul presses his lips to my forehead and doesn’t say anything. “I thought I knew everything back then.” I laugh and wipe my eyes with the hem of my dress. “Turns out I didn’t know shit.” “Do you ever think about looking for them?” I shake my head. “No. Never.” I point to special pictures of my son. “His mom—her name is Jill—she sometimes sends me special milestone pictures. This is his first tooth he got and the first tooth he lost. And this one is from his first step. That wasn’t even part of the agreement. She just does it because she wants me to know how he’s doing.” I try to grin through the tears. “He’s doing so great. He’s smart. And they can send him to college and to special schools. He takes piano, and he plays sports. And Jill says he likes to paint.” My voice cracks, and I don’t hate that it does. I just let it. “Of course, he does. You’re his mother.” “I just wanted to do what was best for him, you know?” This time, I use Paul’s sleeve to wipe my eyes. I blink hard trying to clear my vision. “That’s what parents do. We do what’s in the best interest of our children.” He kisses me softly. “Thank you for showing me these.

I cracked the top and peered in, confused by the contents. Why did Catherine have strips of paper stashed away? Turning the envelope over, I let them spill out on her desk. I chose one and read her neat handwriting. P.S. You remind me of porridge. Frowning, I read it again and again, but clarification didn’t dawn. What was this? I read more, one by one. P.S. Your cyborg is showing. P.S. I bet you sing Barry Manilow in the shower. P.S. You wear pleated khakis on the weekend. I just know it. It took me until the fourth strip to realize they were all exactly one inch wide and the paper matched the notebook. Son of a bitch. I scooped the strips back into the envelope and carried them into my office. There, I dumped them all out again and matched one perfectly to Catherine’s previously written schedules. My heart slammed in my chest, but my brain was five steps behind. I read more of them, still trying to comprehend what I was seeing. P.S. Are you even human? P.S. Do you shower in your bathing suit? P.S. You’ve memorized the lyrics to every single Nickelback song, haven’t you? P.S. I would rather be trapped in an invisible box with a mime before hanging out with you.

I headed straight for the half-bathroom I remembered seeing on my other visits over. I peed and started washing my hands, and it was when I reached for a towel that I happened to look down and saw something small and brown run across the floorboard. I froze. Leaning over just a little, I peeked around the toilet and saw it again. Two little eyes. One bare tail. About two inches long. It darted off, disappearing around the trash can. I wasn’t proud of myself… but I screamed. Not loud, but it was still a scream. And then I got the hell out of there. Honestly, I wasn’t sure I’d ever moved so fast going down the hall, thankful I’d seen him after I’d pulled my pants on and zipped them up, going as far away from the bathroom as possible. Which ended up being the kitchen. Rhodes was standing by the island, tearing paper towels off when he noticed me coming. A frown came over his face. “What’s—” “There’s a mouse in the bathroom!” I squeaked and went past him, pretty much leaping onto the stool beside the counter, then jumping from there to the back of the couch with a frantic look toward the floor to make sure I hadn’t been followed. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Amos stood up so fast the chair he was in fell backward, and the next thing I knew, he’d leaped onto the couch and ended up beside me, his butt propped up on the back of it, legs dangling inches off the floor in the air. Johnny and Jackie either didn’t care or were so stunned by Amos and me, that they hadn’t moved a single inch from the table. “A rat?” Rhodes asked from the exact same spot he’d been in. I shook my head at him, exhaling hard to try and bring my heart rate down. “No, a mouse.” His eyebrows crept up about a half-inch, but I noticed it. “You’re screaming because of a mouse?” Did he have to ask so slowly? I swallowed. “Yes!” He blinked. Beside me, Amos suddenly snorted deep in his throat like he hadn’t knocked his chair over. Then I noticed that Rhodes’s chest was shaking. “What?” I asked, eyeing the floor again. His chest was shaking even more, and he barely managed to wheeze out, both eyes squeezing closed, “I… I didn’t know you were into parkour.” Amos snorted again, lowering his legs and planting his feet. “You backflipped onto the table…,” Rhodes choked out. He was wheezing. The son of a bitch was wheezing. “No, I did not!” I argued, starting to feel just a little bit… foolish. I hadn’t. I didn’t know how to backflip. “You jumped from the island to the couch,” Rhodes kept going, raising a fist to hold it right in front of his nose. He could barely talk. “Your face… Ora, it was so white,” Am started, bottom lip starting to tremble. I pressed my lips together and stared at my favorite traitor. “My soul left my body for a second, Am. And you didn’t exactly walk over here either, okay.” Rhodes, who decided that this was what he was going to find hilarious, barely choked out, “You looked like you saw a ghost.” Amos burst out laughing. Then Rhodes burst out laughing. One quick glance confirmed that Johnny was chuckling too, Jackie was the only one giving me a smile. I was glad someone had a heart. They were cracking up, totally and completely cracking up. “You know, I hope it crawls into one of your mouths for being so mean to me,” I muttered, joking. Mostly. Rhodes grinned so wide, he came over and slapped his son on the back while they both kept laughing. At me. But together. And maybe I wasn’t going to be able to sleep tonight now, worried there might be a mouse next door, but it would be worth it.

I have never loved another person the way I love you,” Liam confessed. “You fill this space inside me that I didn’t know was missing. You complete all of us. You paper over the cracks and fill them with gold.” Tears burned in my eyes. “I love you, Hellspawn. I will do everything in my power to avenge you, to help you get vengeance. And I will kill anyone who puts a hand on you that isn’t one of us…

Piglet felt the apples of her cheeks lift and knew, in a way, that Margot had started to put her back together: the cracks of herself papered over, her heart, newly knotted with scar tissue, closed to confession.

The CV is a particular sub-genre of post-Fordist autobiography, a copy-and-paste cosmetic narrative which accentuates the positives and papers over any cracks; ironically, at a time when continuity in work is at its weakest, one's life history must be made to seem as smooth and characterless as a shampoo advertisement. This again is a form of emotional labour, a micromanagement of feeling. Can I force myself into a state of enthusiasm as I string together various unwanted and unfulfilling jobs and inflate their personal significance, while reducing my identity to a series of bullet points? If I can, then once again, this is a triumph of style over substance.

The angels and hallucination-like, we were all fighting for me to not be taken in any way by demons, or by the girls, that wanted me for their sexual role-playing games. Yet, the sisters got their way a lot of the time as you know, as luck would have it. We were fighting them off, as well as beating them all off too. I remember the white angels would shock the demons away with their bolt of lightning strikes and the thunder would crack out the glass of the school windows, and spray all over us. Supernaturally all the locker doors would open and close, the papers would fly, the pencils would zip by me like their uniforms and fingers, I was in the storm of their pain, everything was happening so hallucination-like. This is how Kristen told me her rapes were like too, maybe, that is the way it is for all girls, which lived through all that hurt…? Your brain is half on, yet it is like it is wanting to be turned off. The demons have satanic powers, which make angels freeze in mid-fight and flight. They are so strong they could tear the wings off of an Angel with their thought of mind. However, the bolt of lightning can make demons blow up; conversely, they disintegrate and then rise from the ashes once more to fight yet again. They do not go away unless they have bodies to go into, or they are banished back down to hell. Otherwise, to claim the souls they want, you have to agree with what they say; only if you do not deny them, they will remain. Never- ever let them win! The demons can take on any figure or form they want to. Some choose to be animals, and some choose to be human-like beings, like the four sisters and clan, and the only protection was from the angels above me that would fight them off of me. Do you see what I mean- or did I lose you?

The wood floor is- so splintery on my flip-flops like nails are sticking up, poking me and crap, the boards are all cracked and you can see down one story, or more at times. Besides, some floorboards are missing altogether; I feel like I could go through the floor at any time. (Room 202) There is no light coming anywhere but her light she is giving off, looking over everything in its interiority, I see that there are boards over the old glass smashed glass window panes; not even the smallest glimmer or flicker of a star or moonlight at this point to guide me, nothing to show the way other than spun web cover over everything, even the hole that should not be cover seemed roached out, look at all the spiders crawling all down me, I don’t go in there I was thinking. I went at night so no one would find me. Look even going down the hall the lockers start to bang themselves like humpers of the past. I could see kissing here doing that too. Like I could see it all in my mind too, like they all did when the kids slammed their looker in these unhallowed halls, look now there are papers everywhere, just left behind like love notes of the past, I want to read yet it has nothing there to be said, I could get some of it, yet not all… I don’t have anything wrong with me, I can’t see, should I take it with me? I do- (It was tucked in her underwire right strap, her outfit when cut off to be laid out for viewing.) -It was Nevaeh and Chiaz’s first love note. (Now) You can foresee what's going to happen… can’t you- I sure did not in the past nor do I know, yet I do at times. It’s a new day, she sat back- crap let's do it a new way today- damn (‘Like- I want to choke down my rabbit,’) it works for me it's well to get that right, or so Jenny said. Yet I was feeling more than that below, and so was she, in my mouth. ‘If you are going through hell keep on going don’t slow down, if you are scared don’t show it…!’ My love was singing to be willing to do this, yet you can’t hear that and if you do, you’ll hear Maggie coming out. (Back at the old school) The hollowing sound of her voices in my face, its blows’ a-crossed me and spooks me out, it is so haunted within these falling walls, yet see is not scaring me at this point, I feel somewhat safe. As well as the wind howling as my thought makes, makes me think of who she maybe thinks I am. I see the hand-covered handrails going up past the old Gym and girl’s locker room, looking into the showers it’s like- I could see bare-ass naked girls and the steam in the air. With the sounds of: ‘O-op-e-s-y- don’t drop the soap!’ All along with the sounds of girls giggling, hell- I don’t want to know what’s going on. Water running, just guessing like them… I had the bad thoughts and photos running in my little-wicked mind. Like the sands of time… not fading all away or turning all too black and write. Up till now the water and sound or the girls are from the past, or so I think and have been long gone, for them to be real girls, it was abandoned for years, like what is this crap…? Like the snapping of a towel, my head spun around, as the little girl pulled me to the next room by her resenting glow, In the locker part of the room- I see all the old desked linked together, she's sitting there proverb her story to me, her hair braids are freaking cute to me; like no girl does that anymore. Yet who are these girls, I think- I know, yet they don’t, see me. They don’t even think I see them all up in it. I heard these stories and believe it yet; I don’t believe it seeing it now unfolding in front of me. There is some random b*tch putting the redhead face in the capper, with the sound of the flush! I am good, she said.

Cal studied Savvy as the C-130 sped down the runway. The plane held a half-dozen marines and supplies bound for Manda Bay. She'd chosen the seat across from him near the tail of the aircraft and donned protective headphones. Between the headphones and other passengers, there was no way for them to discuss the mission during the flight. He’d been released from the brig at two thirty in the morning and was told he’d be departing on the transport as scheduled. Savvy hadn't stopped by his CLU to offer an explanation, and he’d decided not to go to hers. He needed to sleep. They'd have time to sort things out before departure. But daylight brought no communication from her, and he’d been surprised to find himself alone in the vehicle that delivered him to the airstrip the US military shared with the international airport. He’d begun to wonder if the op would be canceled, when she arrived seven minutes before their scheduled takeoff. She’d dropped into the seat across from him with little more than a nod in his direction, donned the headphones, and cracked open a file. She stared at the papers on her lap as if they held the meaning of the universe. They reached cruising altitude. The interior was loud, but not so loud the headphones were necessary. Still, she kept them on. He’d been watching her for twenty minutes, noting that she had yet to turn a page. He’d been looking forward to seeing her. He’d wanted to check the bruises on her neck, make sure she was okay. But the concern had evaporated in the wake of her avoidance. Her utter lack of acknowledgment of what had transpired last night. He reminded himself she’d been assaulted. It was wrong of him to expect her to be rational, cool, and calm today. She’d said the man had assaulted her before, and Evers had indicated the same with his words and actions. She had the right to be messed up. If this were a normal situation. But nothing about this was normal. They were heading into a covert op, and he knew next to nothing of their plan. Worse, he needed to know if she was on her game. He needed Savannah James, Paramilitary Operations Officer for the Special Operations Group within SAD. He needed the covert operator who could do everything he could do, backward and in high heels. He didn’t know if that woman had boarded this turboprop. Flights always took longer on C-130s, and he estimated they’d be in the air about three and a half hours. Too long to wait to find out what was going on in that complex brain of hers. He unbuckled his harness and moved to the empty seat next to her. Her fingers tightened on the files in her lap. He reached over and extracted the papers from her grip and set them aside. He slid a hand down her arm and took her hand, interlocking his fingers with hers. Her hand was tight, stiff, then all at once, she relaxed and squeezed his hand. After a moment, she pulled off the protective headphones and leaned her head on his shoulder. Something in his chest shifted. He was holding hands with Savvy as she leaned on him, and it felt…right. Good. Like something he’d needed forever but hadn't known. Several marines sat too close for them to attempt conversation, and a guy sitting across the empty fuselage watched with unabashed curiosity. Cal didn't care. He liked the way she leaned on him. The way she was willing to accept comfort. The way her hand felt in his. And he was thankful he hadn't been cut from this mission, no matter how much he hadn't wanted it at first. The idea of her having to pretend to be a sexual plaything to anyone but him made his blood pressure spike. It was messed up, but he couldn't deny it. The fact that he didn't like the idea of any other man touching her—even if it was only an act—was a problem to deal with when they returned to Camp Citron. Right now, he was a soldier embarking on a mission, and as he would on any mission, he’d protect his teammate at all costs.

Jamie nodded back. ‘Ms Cartwright—’ ‘It’s Mrs,’ she said automatically, the colour still drained from her cheeks. Her hand had moved from her mouth to her collarbones now as she processed it. ‘Would you mind if I took a look at those files?’  She shook her head, her eyes vacant. ‘No, no — there’s nothing much to see, but… Of course—’ She cut off, squeezing her face into a frown. ‘He’s… dead? But how? What happened? My God,’ she muttered. ‘He was… My God.’ Jamie stepped around her, leaving Roper to the interview. He was better at that sort of thing anyway. She rarely found interviewees easy to deal with. They always got emotional, blathered.  ‘Do you mind if I record this conversation?’ Roper asked behind her as she walked towards the back room. ‘No,’ Mary said quietly. ‘Great, thanks.’ He exhaled slowly, fiddling with the buttons, adding the audio file to the case. ‘What can you tell me about Ollie?’  The voices faded away as she reached the door and pushed on the handle. Inside looked to be a rehearsal room. On the left there were two steps leading up to a red door that opened onto the side of the stage, and the floor was bare concrete painted red. The paint had been chipped from years of use and the blue paint job underneath was showing through. Mary had a desk set up with two chairs in front of it, but no computer. In fact there was nothing of any value in the room.  On the right there was an old filing cabinet, and laid against it were rusted music stands as well as a mop and bucket and a couple of bottles of bargain cleaning supplies that had the word ‘Value’ written across them.  At the back of the room there was an old bookcase filled with second-hand literature — mostly children’s books and charity shop novels. Next to that an old plastic covered doctor’s examination bed was pushed against the wall. Sponge and felt were showing through the ripped brown covering.  Stood on the floor was a trifold cotton privacy screen that looked new, if not cheap. On the cracked beige walls, there was also a brand new hand-sanitiser dispenser and wide paper roll holder. She approached and checked the screws. They were still shiny. Brass. They had been put up recently. At least more recently than anything else in there.  The dispenser looked like it had come straight out of a doctor’s office, the roll holder too. Paper could be pulled out and laid over the bed so patients didn’t have to sit on the bare covering. Jamie stared at them for a second and then reached out, squirting sanitiser onto her hands.  She massaged it in before moving on.

Every Christian in every age has been tempted to paper over scripture’s cracks, explain away its oddities, show it’s no different or more demanding than what we hearers already think we know about God and the world. This is a mistake. Scripture is spectacularly odd.

Look, Dad. I’m okay. I like this girl. Everything’s normal. “Only my father,” I say to Tina, “would imagine that anyone could find paperwork arousing.” “What?” Her smile is a touch too wide, a little too faked. “Don’t tell me your media training didn’t cover this, either.” I set the stack of papers on the flat surface of my desk and gesture Tina to sit in the leather-bound executive chair. “What am I supposed to say, then? Come on, baby. It’s a nondisclosure agreement. You’ll like it. I promise.” She gives me an unimpressed look. “God,” she says. “And I thought you were supposed to be a good liar. That’s not how you do it.” She bites her lip and then she leans toward me. Her eyelashes sweep down, and when she talks, she lowers her voice toward sultry. “I don’t know, Blake.” She bites her lip and reaches gingerly for the papers, stroking her thumb along the edge. “It’s so…big. I’m not sure it will fit.” I almost choke. She looks up with a touch of a smile. Fuck. I started this. “We’ll go nice and slow.” I pull a chair beside her and sit down, and very slowly take a pen from the holder. “Tell me if it hurts and I can stop anytime. I promise.” “Be gentle.” I know we’re just joking. I know this doesn’t mean anything. Still, my body doesn’t know this is a show when I lean toward her. I don’t feel like I’m lying when I inhale the sent of her hair. It goes straight to my groin, a stab of lust. “Trust me,” I murmur. She’s sitting in my chair. She’s smaller than me and all that dark leather surrounds her, blending in with her hair. But when she looks up, tilting her head toward me, she doesn’t seem tiny. She pulls the first paper-clipped section of pages to her, glances at the first paragraph, and wrinkles her nose. “Ouch,” she says in a much less sensual tone of voice. “It hurts already.” “It basically says that if you tell anyone anything about Cyclone business, we get one of your kidneys,” I translate helpfully. “How sweet.” She hasn’t looked up from the document. “Do your lawyers know you summarize their forms like that?” “Disclose two things,” I say, “and we get two kidneys.” “Mmm. Playing rough. What happens if I disclose three? You shut down my dialysis machine?” “You get a commemorative Cyclone pen,” I say mock-seriously. “Come on. We’re not monsters.” She cracks a smile at that. She’s not one of those girls who always smiles, and that means that when she does smile, it means something. Her whole face lights up and my breath catches at the sight. I lean in, as if I could breathe in her amusement. But then she drops her head and goes back to reading. When she finishes, she signs with a flourish. “What’s next?” she says. “Bring it on.” I hand over the next few pages. She holds it up and looks at me. “Don’t lie to me, baby. I bet you make all the girls you bring in here sign this.” You know what? I have never before found SEC regulations this sexy. I lean close to her. “No way,” I murmur. “This is just for you.” “Really?” She manages that look of hurt skepticism so well. I reach out, almost touching her cheek—until I remember that this isn’t real. “No,” I whisper back. “Not really. Everyone does sign it; it’s company policy.” “Oh, too bad.” She’s still reading the page. “I was hoping you had a selective disclosure just for me.” Selective, I realize, is a sexy word when drawn out the way she does it, her tongue touching her lips on the l sound. So is disclosure. “I can disclose,” I hear myself saying. “Selectively.” “Maybe you can give it to me in a material and nonpublic place.” I lean toward her. “You know me. I put the inside in insider trading.” She’s still holding the pen poised above the paper. I touch my finger to the cap and then slowly slide it down the barrel until my hand meets hers. A shock of electricity hits me, followed by a jolt of lust.

find. Henry said she lived right across the hall.” Chapter 14 “So, this is the scene of the crime,” Ida said as they pulled up in front of an old Victorian. From outward appearances, it was hard to imagine that something sinister had happened inside. It was nicely kept, with off-white siding and purple trim. “Looks like a birthday cake,” Ruth said as they walked up the steps toward the purple door. She opened the door to reveal a small entryway. A set of stairs loomed in front of them. Old-fashioned green flowered wallpaper papered the walls. The floor was hardwood, scuffed from years of wear. To the right was a solid oak door with the number Two on it. “According to the case files, Rosa and Henry lived at number two.” Nans gestured toward the door on the other side of the hall which had a number One. “So this one must be Mrs. Pettigrew.” Ruth was standing closest to the door, so she knocked. “Who is it?” A voice drifted out almost before the knock stopped echoing. Clearly, Mrs. Pettigrew kept a close eye on the place and had seen them come in. “It’s the Ladies’ Detective Agency.” Nans’s voice took on an official tone. “We have some questions on a case if you’d be so kind as to answer them.” Of course, Doris Pettigrew would be thrilled to answer questions. If she was truly the busybody that it sounded like she was, she wouldn’t be able to resist the lure of gossip and finding out exactly what case the ladies were referring to. Lexy heard a series of locks clicking and chains sliding, and then the door cracked and a rheumy blue eye appeared. “Do you have any credentials?” “Of course.” Nans shoved a business card at her. It was in a laminate case, so it resembled an official badge of some sort. Doris snatched the card and pulled it inside. It took her a few seconds, but Nans’s card must have passed muster because the door opened and Doris said, “Come in.” Ida went in first. “Oh, this is… unusual.” Lexy peered over Ida’s head. She couldn’t be sure exactly what Ida thought was unusual. There were so many things. It could have been the giant four-foot-tall dolls that stood around the edge of the room. Or it might have been the knitted afghans that covered every surface. Or maybe it was the stuffed animals that were sitting on the couch as if holding a conversation. Then again, it might have been the herd of cats that was sniffing around Ida’s ankles. Doris handed the card back to Nans. “I’m Doris Pettigrew, by the way.” They all introduced themselves, and Doris gestured toward the living room for them to sit. Ida gingerly plucked a large pink elephant off the sofa and put it on the floor then took its place. A black cat immediately jumped into her lap. The rest of the ladies followed her lead, moving dolls aside, disturbing stuffed animals, and pushing cats out of their laps. Lexy sat in the only chair not occupied by a stuffed animal. The smell of mothballs wafted up as the rough wool of the crocheted granny square pillow irritated her arm. Achoo! Helen sneezed and pushed the fluffy tail of a white Persian out of her face.

Until the beginning of 2003, Italians smoked everywhere and considered it quite normal; they lit up inside stores, including those which sell fabric or paper goods, in the airport, ignoring repeated loudspeaker announcements that no smoking was allowed, at the greengrocers where cigarette ash dangled perilously over the zucchini and the cherry tomatoes, and even in hospitals, although from time to time crack Italian Carabinieri units called the NAS, set up to enforce health standards, would appear, unannounced, and hand out hefty fines to all the doctors and nurses they found in flagrante. Once I even had blood taken by two white-coated doctors who took my vital fluid with cigarettes dangling from their lips, an open window their only concession to my passive smoke concerns.

blossom during and beyond her childhood. ‘We were more sisters than friends,’ Maack told the Reading Eagle. ‘Taylor’s family was my family.’ Yet this bond was not enough to paper over the cracks of hurt that Taylor felt when kids bullied her. Lots of kids found her ‘annoying’ and ‘uncool’. Among her offences to coolness was the fact that she was not

DOC’S BRAN-OATMEAL-RAISIN COOKIES Preheat oven to 350 degrees F., rack in the middle position. ¾ cup raisins (either regular or golden, your choice) ¾ cup boiling water 1 cup white (granulated) sugar ½ cup brown sugar (pack it down when you measure it) ¾ cup (1 and ½ sticks, 6 ounces) salted butter, softened to room temperature 2 large eggs ½ teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon baking soda 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon ¼ teaspoon grated nutmeg (freshly grated is best) 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 2 cups all-purpose flour (pack it down in the cup when you measure it) 1 and ½ cups dry quick oatmeal (I used Quaker Quick 1-Minute) 2 cups bran flake cereal Place ¾ cup of raisins in a 2-cup Pyrex measuring cup or a small bowl that can tolerate boiling water without cracking. Pour the ¾ cup boiling water over the raisins in the cup. Stir a bit with a fork so they don’t stick together, and then leave them, uncovered, on the counter to plump up. Prepare your cookie sheets by spraying them with Pam or another nonstick cooking spray, or lining them with parchment paper that you also spray with Pam or another nonstick cooking spray. Hannah’s 1st Note: This cookie dough is a lot easier to make if you use an electric mixer. Place the cup of white sugar in the bottom of a mixing bowl. Add the half-cup of brown sugar. Mix them together until they’re a uniform color. Place the softened butter in the mixer bowl and beat it together with the sugars until the mixture is nice and fluffy. Mix in the eggs, one at a time, beating after each addition. Add the salt, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg and vanilla extract. Beat until the mixture is smooth and well incorporated. On LOW speed, add the flour, one-half cup at a time, beating after each addition. Continue to beat until everything is well blended. Drain the raisins by dumping them in a strainer. Throw away any liquid that remains, then gently pat the raisins dry with a paper towel. With the mixer running on LOW speed, add the raisins to the cookie dough. With the mixer remaining on LOW speed, add the dry oatmeal in half-cup increments, mixing after each increment. Turn the mixer OFF, and let the dough rest while you prepare the bran flakes. Measure 2 cups of bran flake cereal and place them in a 1-quart freezer bag. Roll the bag up from the bottom, getting out as much air as possible, and then seal it with the bran flakes inside. Squeeze the bran flakes with your fingers, crushing them inside the bag. Place the bag on the counter and squash the bran flakes with your hands. Once they’re in fairly small pieces, take the bag over to the mixer. Turn the mixer on LOW speed. Open the bag and add the crushed bran flakes to your cookie dough, mixing until they’re well incorporated. Turn off the mixer, scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula, and give the bowl a final stir by hand. Drop the dough by rounded Tablespoonfuls (use a Tablespoon from your silverware drawer, not one you’d use for measuring ingredients) onto your prepared cookie sheet. There should be 12 cookie dough mounds on every standard-size cookie sheet. Hannah’s 2nd Note: Lisa and I use a level 2-Tablespoon scooper to form these cookies down at The Cookie Jar. Bake Doc’s Bran-Oatmeal-Raisin Cookies at 350 degrees F. for 13 to 15 minutes, or until golden brown on top. Remove the cookies from the oven, and let them cool on the cookie sheets for 2 minutes. Then remove them to a wire rack to cool completely. Yield: 2 to 3 dozen delicious cookies, depending on cookie size. Hannah’s 3rd Note: Doc had to warn the Lake Eden Memorial Hospital cooks not to let the patients have more than two cookies. Since they contain bran and bran is an aid to the digestive system, patients who eat a lot of these cookies could be spending a lot of time in the little room with the porcelain fixtures.

BROWN RICE TORTILLAS Phase 2 Elimination This is one of the most popular recipes from our blog, NourishingMeals.com. Use these tortillas to make Black Bean, Yam, and Avocado Tacos (here) or Pomegranate Chicken Tacos (here). You can also serve them alongside your favorite soup or stew for dipping. They are soft and pliable when warm, but straight out of the fridge, like most gluten-free tortillas, they will crack. All you need to do to make them pliable again is to place one on a wire rack over a pot of simmering water and steam for 30 seconds on each side. I use an 8-inch cast-iron tortilla press to get them super thin, and then cook them in a cast-iron pan. 1¼ cups brown rice flour or sprouted brown rice flour ¾ cup arrowroot powder or tapioca flour ½ teaspoon sea salt 1 cup boiling water virgin coconut oil for cooking In a small mixing bowl, whisk together the brown rice flour, arrowroot, and salt. Add the boiling water and quickly mix with a fork. Knead the dough a few times to form a ball. It should have the texture of Play-Doh. If it is too wet and sticky, add more flour. If it is too dry, add a little more boiling water. Heat a 10-inch cast-iron skillet over medium heat. Divide the dough into six to eight equal-size balls. Place a piece of parchment paper on the bottom of a tortilla press, then place one of the balls in the center and cover with a second sheet of parchment. Press to form a thin, round tortilla. Add about 1 teaspoon coconut oil to the hot skillet. Gently remove the parchment paper and place the tortilla in the hot skillet. Cook for 2 minutes on each side. Repeat with the remaining dough, adding more coconut oil to the skillet each time. Place the cooked tortillas on a plate with another plate flipped over on top of it to keep them warm and soft. Let them sit for about 20 minutes inside the plates; this way, they will be nice and pliable for serving. Yield: 6 to 8 tortillas

roman-style omelet omelette romano ½ pound hot or sweet Italian sausage 12 large eggs Pinch of baking powder Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper 4 tablespoons unsalted butter ¼ cup julienned roasted red bell pepper (see Note) 2 tablespoons fresh basil, washed, stems removed, julienned 2 ounces goat cheese, crumbled (about 2 tablespoons) 1 In a sauté pan, cook the sausage over medium-high heat until nicely browned and cooked through. Drain on paper towels until cool enough to handle, and then crumble the sausage meat. Set aside. 2 Crack the eggs into a mixing bowl, add the baking powder, and season to taste with salt and pepper. Using a wire whisk, beat until smooth and airy. 3 In a large nonstick sauté or 7-or 8-inch omelet pan, melt 1 tablespoon of butter over medium heat. Pour about a quarter of the eggs into the pan, sprinkle with a little more salt and pepper, and cook for 30 seconds, or until the bottom begins to set. 4 Gently flip the eggs and cook for about 30 seconds longer, or until the bottom sets but the eggs do not brown. 5 Sprinkle about a quarter of the bell pepper, a quarter of the basil, and a quarter of the cheese just off center on the omelet. Fold in half, cook for about 1 minute to soften the cheese and warm the bell pepper, and slide from the pan onto a plate and serve. Repeat to make 3 more omelets. I call this a Roman omelet because of its ingredients, particularly the fresh sausage. Every supermarket in the United States sells Italian sausage labeled “sweet” or “hot and spicy.” The choice is yours. When I think of the sausage I have eaten in Italy and especially in Rome, I think of the classic fennel-infused fresh pork sausage, which adds flavor that is just bold enough for this simple omelet whose flavor is further boosted with roasted peppers and basil. The goat cheese is the finishing touch.  serves 4 note To roast bell peppers, char them over a grill or gas flame or under a broiler until blackened on all sides and soft. Turn them as they char to ensure even blackening. Remove from the heat and transfer to a bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and set aside for about 20 minutes to steam as they cool. Lift the peppers from the bowl and rub or peel off the blackened skin. frittata with oven-dried cherry tomatoes and mozzarella frittata con pomodorini secchi e mozzarella 12 large eggs 1 cup freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese ¼ cup whole milk Pinch of baking powder Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper 4 tablespoons unsalted butter 32 Oven-Dried Cherry Tomato halves (recipe follows) 16 baby mozzarella balls, each about ½ ounce, halved