V.C. Andrews

We will not open healed wounds!""My wounds are not healed!" I stated just as firmly. "They will never be healed until justice is done!

Though I'm not sure, I thought I saw women dressed in black, with her head and face covered by a black veil, duck behind a tree as we approached the road and parked car. Hiding so we wouldn't see her. But I caught a glimpse, enough to reveal the rope of lustrous pearls she wore. Pearls that were there for a thin white hand to lift and nervously, out of long habit, twist and untwist into a knot. Only one women I knew did that--and she was the perfect one to wear black, and should run to hide!Forever hide! Color all her days black! Every last one!

Fool! Never wait on a man! Let him wait on himself!

...I'm a fool. I expect too much, then I'm angry because nothing ever works out the way I want. When I was young and full of hopes and aspirations, I didn't know I would get hurt so often. I think I'll get tough and won't ache again, then my fragile shell shatters, and again, symbolically, my blood is spilled with the tears I shed. I pull myself back together again, go on, convince myself there is a reason for everything, and at some point in my life it will be disclosed. And when I have what I want, I hope to god it stays long enough to let me know I have it, and it wont hurt when it goes, for I don't expect it to stay, not now. I'm like a doughnut, always being punch out in the middle, and constantly I go around searching for the missing piece, and on and on it goes, never ending, only beginning...

That's the way all life's battles are won.. You don't look at the overall picture. You take one step, then another, and another... until you arrive at your destination.

Maybe that was what millions could do-- nail a satisfied smirk to one's face.

I love you,_ was his reply. __ make myself keep on loving you, despite what you do. I've got to love you. We all have to love you, and believe inyou, and think you are looking out for our best interests. But look at us, Momma, and really see us.

Being rich and coming from a distinguished family background doesn't guarantee happiness, Abby. In fact, it might make happiness harder to find because you have to live up to akk that expectation.

And thank you for saying all of that, and for loving me, for you haven't gone unloved, or unadmired, yourself.

You are an intriguing combination, half child, half seductress, half angel.

If a little hill of happiness would satisfy Chris, good for him. Butafter all these years of striving, hoping, dreaming, longing-I wanted amountain high! A hill wasn't enough.

Chris was in the rocker, fully clothed, and was strumming idly onCory's guitar. "Dance, ballerina, dance," he softly chanted, and hissinging voice wasn't bad at all. Maybe we could work as musicians---atrio -if Carrie ever recovered enough to want a voice again.

For when Iwaltzed with Chris, I'd made him someone else.

Beauty thinks it needs no talent and can feed on itself, so it soon dies.

-just on the verge ofbecoming a woman, and in these three years and almost five months, I'dreached maturity. I was older than the mountains outside. The wisdomof the attic was in my bones, etched on my brain, part of my flesh.

The mountain trees that grew between the pines were a brilliant blaze of fall colors, like fire against the emerald green of the pines, firs and pruces. And it was, as I'd told myself long ago, the year's last passionate love affair before it grew old and died from the frosty bite of winter.

Cathy, don't look so defeated. She was only trying to put us downagain.Maybe nothing did work out right for her, but that doesn't mean we aredoomed. Let's go forth tomorrow with no great expectations of findingperfection. Then, expecting only a small share of happiness, we won'tbe disappointed.

We had been separated by time and distance and events so long, it was as if we had to get to know each other again, but if it was possible to fall in love with the same person twice, I did.