The Case for Jamie

Reading took me away from myself, so I tried to be reading all the time.

Being a woman with a contrary opinion does not render me hysterical.

I felt it. Felt everything. I knew I wanted to erase myself from the top down, like a drawing, and that still I wanted someone to touch my edges and tell me that they loved me despite them.

I want to be good without being nice. Can I do that?

Holmes wasn’t a myth, or a king. She was a person. And to have a relationship with a person, you had to treat them like one.

Just because you know something about yourself doesn’t mean you should be forgiven for it.

I was somebody who only wanted to see the world through paintings, never a photograph.

There was a kind of relief in it, the giving up.

Girls could be so profligate with their love, as though by spreading it wide, they would induce the world to love them back. As though the world wasn’t going to take that love and beat them with it.

Wuz.’ They spelled it ‘wuz.’ ‘Wuz’! I’m in AP English! I read a lot! I read big books. Big f***ing books! I read Tolstoy, and Faulkner, and - ‘wuz’?

In another century, Holmes, Watson had said, you would have been burned as a witch. "Let them try," I said aloud, and rolled the delivery door up and open.

I miss you too. I miss you like breathing. Have I already said that? I do, though. I miss you like naan pizza and builder’s tea. Like you’re the home I never knew I had.

I kept thinking of a film I’d seen late at night, years ago, where a boy and girl wandered a city all night long, talking and falling a little bit in love. They’d been in Europe. They’d agreed to meet again the next year if they still felt the same about each other.

The only common denominator in everything you attempt is yourself.

I kept my own company. That was a polite way of saying that I was my own friend and if I want to be alone I’d have to get rid of myself.

Holmes," I said, reaching up to touch her hands, to fold them in mine. "Do you forgive me?" "You sound like you're making some kind of decision," I said, because she was scaring me a little. "Do you?" I paused, thinking. Not long ago, I'd wanted everything from her. For her to be my confidant, my general. My best and only friend. I wanted her to be the other half of me, like we together made a coin. She the king's head to my tails. I loved her like you would the person you'd always wanted to be, and in return I would have followed her anywhere, excused any action, fought to keep her hoisted high on her throne. When that myth I'd made of her shattered, I didn't know what to do. This last year, any thought I had of her felt wrong. Skewed. How could I understand what had happened, when I had put up so many lenses between my experience of her and the girl herself? Holmes wasn't a myth, or a king. She was a person. And to have a relationship with a person, you had to treat them like one. "Can I forgive you a little now?" I asked. "And then a little more tomorrow, and the next day? If there is a next day?" "Yes," she said, quickly, like it was more than she had asked for. Like I might take it back. "Provided you don't blow anything up, of course." "Yes." "Or try to look in my ears again while I'm sleeping -" "Yes," she said, laughing. That look on her face, always, like she was surprised to be laughing, like it was something involuntary and slightly shameful, like a sneeze.

I simply was what I was—a girl who had forged herself into a statue.

When things were going wrong, it was so easy to imagine that everyone knew, that everyone was talking about it. But nobody cared nearly as much about your life as you did.

He had looked at a teenage girl, his teenage son’s girlfriend, and seen a shirley temple where he should have seen poison.

You couldn’t control how someone else felt. You could hardly control how you felt most of the time.

People have motives, Lottie. People aren’t blindly altruistic. Even if all they’re getting is the thrill of self-righteousness, they’re seeking some reward.

So time passed, as time tends to do.

I miss you enough to say: "Please, don't let me bully you into doing anything you wouldn't want to do.

Girls could be so profiliged with their love. As though by spreading it wide they would induce the world to love them back. As though the world wasn't going to take that love and beat them with it.

Wuz.' They spelled it 'wuz.' 'Wuz'! I'm in AP English! I read a lot! I read books. Big fucking books! I read Tolstoy, and Faulkner, and- 'wuz'?

All I want to do is explore London with you again. You know parts of the city I didn't even know existed. Sometimes I feel like it invents new parts of itself just for you.

There were so many comments on my accent that I adopted a Texan swagger just to be contrary.

I am being rational, she said, lower. Being a woman with a contrary opinion does not render me hysterical.

What haunted me most wasn’t the ropes, or the chair, or the gasoline, though those played recurring parts in my nightmares. It wasn’t Alistair, or Hadrian’s crisis of conscience. It was that we’d had the time, Holmes and I. Three long minutes before the police made it to us, enough for her to turn to me and say, This is what you have to do, and why you have to do it. No, what haunted me most was that I knew, had I confessed to August’s murder there on the lawn, Holmes would have found a way to clear my name. But she was letting her brother walk free for his mistake. She’d given up Bryony Downs to God knows what fate. She’d played judge and jury for Hadrian and Phillipa. And now she was letting herself be led away for a crime she didn’t commit, and she would walk away from it unscathed, and there would be no one doing time for August’s death. It wasn’t hers to decide. It wasn’t mine, either. Charlotte Holmes had told me once that she wasn’t a good person. That day I’d begun to believe it.

Why did you help me?” Hadrian looked down at Alistair. “He deserves to rot in a cell. He doesn’t get to pick his ending. He doesn’t get to burn down the house I’m hiding in, either, even if it is his own.