Sarah Addison Allen

Those silly girls had no idea what they were really celebrating. They had no idea what it took to bring Agatha and her friends together seventy-five years ago. The Women's Society Club had been about supporting one another, about banding together to protect one another because no one else would. But it had turned into an ugly beast, a means by which rich ladies would congratulate themselves by giving money to the poor. And Agatha had let it happen. All her life, it seemed, she was making up for things she let happen.

Just as she was about to turn, she caught a whiff of something sweet. She inhaled deeply, instinctively wanting to savor it, but then she nearly choked when it landed on her tongue with a bitter taste. It was so strong she actually made a face.That, her grandmother had described to her once after making a particularly bad lemon cream pie, was exactly what regret tasted like.

To Fred, those years seemed to pass like quickly skimming a book and then finding the ending wasn't what he expected. He wished he'd paid more attention to the story.

It was the best first kiss in the history of first kisses. It was as sweet as sugar. And it was warm, as warm as pie. The whole world opened up and I fell inside. I don't know where I was, but I didn't care. I didn't care because the only person who mattered was there with me.

She knew him in that way you can only know a person as a child. Like if you cracked away the adult shell, you'd find that child, happily sitting inside, smiling at you.

But Claire had long ago realized, even after those constant dreams of her mother leaving faded away, that when you are abandoned as a child, you are never able to forget that people are capable of leaving, even if they never do.

A hummingbird cake, she decided as she turned on the kitchen light. It was made with bananas and pineapples and pecans and had a cream cheese frosting.She would make it light enough to float away.She reached over to open the window. To float to her daughter.

We're connected, as women. It's like a spiderweb. If one part of that web vibrates, if there's trouble, we all know it, but most of the time we're just too scared, or selfish, or insecure to help. But if we don't help each other, who will?

Adolescence is like having only enough light to see the step directly in front of you.

He claimed the waters must have, indeed, been healing, because look how hard his journey was on him to get there, and how easy it was on him to get home.

Warm, enticing scents were floating down, basil and oregano and tomato. It made Wes long for something, something he couldn't place. A happy childhood, a home.

But she couldn't start this, because then it would end. Stories like this always ended. She couldn't take this pleasure, because she would spend the rest of her life missing it, hurting from it.

You can't change where you came from, but you can change where you go from here. Just like a book. If you don't like the ending, you make up a new one.

Stability was overrated. Crises and adventures, on the other hand, could actually teach you something.

People like us will never really understand, Evanelle said. We fell in love with the men we were supposed to be with right off the bat. But women with broken hearts, they change.

Mary had become anxious in her old age, and she hated being away from the house for long. She'd hold the girls' hands tightly and calm herself by telling them what she would make for first frost that year- pork tenderloins with nasturtiums, dill potatoes, pumpkin bread, chicory coffee. And the cupcakes, of course, with all different frostings, because what was first frost without frosting? Claire had loved it all, but Sydney had only listened when their grandmother talked of frosting. Caramel, rosewater-pistachio, chocolate almond.

Bay remembered the Waverley house full of pumpkin pie scents in the fall. There had been mountains of maple cakes with violets hidden inside, lakes of butternut soups with chrysanthemum petals floating on top.

Whenever I would get too nosy as a child, my grandmother would say, "When you learn someone else's secret, your own secrets aren't safe. Dig up one, release them all.