Sue Miller

she left all of it behind, thinking of it as the price she was paying for her freedom. At the time, she thought there ought to be a price, she felt so guilty, so ashamed of this failure.

almost every gesture, every remark, as controlling, as dangerous for her

But she knew, even before she and Graham spoke openly about it with each other, that a life together had begun

What she wanted now, she realized, was to give up on people

Graham offered his theory: the problem was that they both felt their mothers should have been better at being women. At being wives. “They should have held on to our fathers for us,” he said. “It was all their fault.”

Now Annie remembered that later that night, just as she was finally dropping off to sleep, Graham had spoken to her out of the dark in his gravelly voice: “Are you allowed to say that your own child makes you almost unbearably sad?”