The Foundling Stacey Halls Quotes

And last of all there was the tag, with the number 627, and two pieces of scrimshaw, carved with initials, which put together made a heart.

The landscape of my life had been rubbed away and painted over anew, and I was only beginning to grow used to it.

laced their stays and polished their shoes to come here. This chapel was a hall of mirrors: they were not here to see one another but rather themselves, through the gaze of others.

I could not look at him, because his grief was raw and exposing. He did not know how to sit with it yet, or what to do with it. I knew that feeling well.

These feminine vessels we inhabited: why did nobody expect them to contain unfeminine feelings? Why could we, too, not be furious and scornful and entirely altered by grief? Why must we accept the cards we had been dealt? I heard the clock chime two in the hall, and attempted to drag myself from the past into the present. But perhaps we never could entirely. Perhaps we were always made up of both, and they fitted perfectly together, like a jagged little heart.

but when my belly grew and the pushing began, it was her hand I wanted to hold. I’d been envious of the girls with mothers last night, who’d worn their love on their faces.

I should have remembered that death as well as life was attracted to youth and beauty. ‘The doctor said it was his brain,’ I told Eliza. ‘He

humble bow. I heard the door close softly behind him, and the pain of my past lapped gently at my feet, inviting me to bathe in its tempting waters, and I sank back into it, and let it carry me down.