Good Girls Don’t Die

People are never what you see on the surface. There’s always a secret heart with a fortress around it, a hideout for their smallest and truest selves, the piece that they never show anybody else.

Most women faked half their lives daily, pretending to have their work and their family and their health completely under control, moving through the world with just enough makeup and effortless shampoo-commercial hair. They were the ones wearing beautiful cream-colored knitted sweaters in white rooms on their Instagram pages. They were the ones spouting corny philosophical sayings and talking about their many blessings. Meanwhile, they were taking prescription drugs just to stand up straight in the morning and their husbands were on their fourth affair with someone from their workplace.

The future was an unknowable space for everyone, and the only thing that made it bearable was having the solid footing of the past as an anchor.

Maggie resisted the urge to explain to the other woman that life was not fair, that it had never been fair, that terrible things happened all the time that nobody planned on, that even when you tried your hardest, you didn't always get what you wanted.

[S]he marveled at how easily the heroines of her favorite books stumbled across physical clues after a crime. Fiction really was easier than truth.

Women are to be seen and not heard