by Torey Hayden
I sighed. ‘And I don’t know what to make of it. All I can see now are Mama’s faults. I want to keep loving her, I really do, but all I can think of is how so much of this whole disaster was of her own making.’
He tipped his head away and looked down at the floor. Thoughtful silence surrounded him. Megan and Alison had become quiet at whatever they were doing, so the silence grew rich and deep around us.
‘Yes, maybe so,’ he said quietly. ‘I don’t know. But what I do know is that we don’t love people because they are perfect. If that were so, we’d never love anyone.’
‘But what’s the point of it? All it does is hurt you in the end. If love doesn’t make up for things, if love doesn’t change people’s faults and make them better, if they still go on suffering and you just get hurt, why bother?’
‘Because we have that choice. That’s what life’s really about, Lesley: what you do with your choices. You can choose to love your mother instead of hate her. Just like your mother chose to see sunflowers instead of wolves. That’s how she survived. That’s how she kept from being destroyed by what happened to her, and no, it wasn’t perfect, but neither is the world. The choice of how we see it is the only real power we have.’
The tears, still in my eyes, swelled, and I turned my face away from him to keep them from falling. ‘That isn’t very much,’ I said.
‘No, I know it doesn’t seem like it right now,’ he said quietly. ‘But in the end, it’s enough.’
He continued to hold my hand, and with his fingers he gently traced the topography of my knuckles. I turned back to look at him. He was watching me, his features soft and vague in the darkness. He smiled very faintly.
Copyright
An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
77–85 Fulham Palace Road,
Hammersmith, London W6 8JB
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published in Great Britain
by Victor Gollancz Ltd 1984
This edition published by
HarperCollins 2008
© Torey Hayden 2008
Torey Hayden asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition © MAY 2012 ISBN 9780007380275
Find out more about HarperCollins and the environment at www.harpercollins.co.uk/green
HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.
About the Publisher
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.
Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street
Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com.au
Canada
HarperCollins Canada
2 Bloor Street East – 20th Floor
Toronto, ON, M4W 1A8, Canada
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.ca
New Zealand
HarperCollinsPublishers (New Zealand) Limited
P.O. Box 1
Auckland, New Zealand
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
77–85 Fulham Palace Road
London, W6 8JB, UK
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
10 East 53rd Street
New York, NY 10022
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com
