The Nest

She was so much better at being alone; being alone came more naturally to her. She led a life of deliberate solitude, and if occasional loneliness crept in, she knew how to work her way out of that particular divot. Or even better, how to sink in and absorb its particular comforts.

Parents are temporary custodians, keeping watch and offering love and trying to leave the child better than they found him.

She supposed she could Google, but she preferred to wonder.

She was open to love, but she was best at managing her own happiness; it was other people’s happiness that sunk her.

Everyone’s always on the hunt for a mirror. It’s basic psychology. You want to see yourself reflected in others. Others—your sister, your parents—they want to look at you and see themselves. They want you to be a flattering reflection of them—and vice-versa. It’s normal. I suppose it’s really normal if you’re a twin. But being somebody else’s mirror? That is not your job.” Nora

She believed in second chances, sometimes more than first chances, which were wasted on youth and indiscretion.

This was the part she hated, the part of a relationship that always nudged her to bail, the part where someone else’s misery or expectations or neediness crept into her carefully prescribed world. It was such a burden, other people’s lives.

Right now, it felt like there was nowhere for his thoughts to alight that wasn't rife with land mines of regret or anger or guilt.

His love for her was quiet and constant, familiar and soothing; it was almost its own thing entirely, like a worn rock or a set of worry beads, something he’d pick up and weigh in his palm occasionally, more comforting than dispiriting.

True patriotism, Jack believed, would have been for his fellow Americans to look inward after 9/11 and accept a little blame, admit the attacks had happened, in part, because of who they were in the world, not in spite of it.

People abandoned one another constantly without performing the courtesy of of actually disappearing. They left, but didn't, lurking about, a constant reminder of what could or should have been.

It's not your job to be anyone's mirror.

People might not change but their incentives could.

Everyone’s always on the hunt for a mirror. It’s basic psychology. You want to see yourself reflected in others.

I you want people to judge you based on the inside, don't distract them from the outside.

Nothing was a sure thing; every choice was just an educated guess, or a leap into a mysterious abyss. People might not change but their incentives could. So

a long, boozy evening when her ebullience was so uncorrupted that she could shift a room’s atmosphere

I hate wearing flats,” she said, tugging her fitted white blouse a little lower. “They make me feel flat all over.

So the first time she and Leo combusted, she'd practically been poised for the breakup. In some inexplicable way, she'd been looking forward to it and all its attendant drama, because wasn't there something nearly lovely–when you were young enough–about guts churning and tear ducts being put to glorious overuse? She recognized the undeniable satisfaction of the first emotional fissure because an unraveling was still something grown-up and, therefore, life affirming. See? The broken heart signalled. I loved enough to lose; I felt enough to weep. Because when you were young enough, the stakes of love were so very small, nearly insignificant. How tragic could a breakup be when it was part of the fabric of expectation from the beginning? The hackneyed fights, the late-night phone calls, the indignant recounting for friends over multiple drinks and in earshot of an appropriately flirtatious bartender–it was theatre for a certain type of person . . . Until it wasn't.

abundance proffered too soon led to lassitude and indolence, a wandering dissatisfaction.

Accommodation. A different and sturdier kind of nest. AS

They’d fallen into their old ways, accusatory and evasive, which was reassuring in a perverted way. Leo understood the nasty pull of the regrettable familiar, how the old grooves could be so much more satisfying than the looming unknown. It’s addicts stayed addicts.

Leo was the only one who had never petitioned Francie for a loan using The Nest as collateral. Jack and Melody and Bea had all asked at one time that she consider an earlier dispersal, but she stubbornly refused.Until Leo’s accident.

I’m curious,” he said, “is telling someone to relax ever helpful? It’s like saying ‘breathe’ to someone who is hyperventilating or ‘swallow’ to a person who’s choking. It’s a completely useless admonition.” “I

Right now, it felt like there was nowhere for his thoughts to alight that wasn’t rife with land mines of regret or anger or guilt. “You’re

Sometimes a small change could make all the difference.

She was so much better at being alone; being alone came more naturally to her. She led a life of deliberate solitude, and if occasional loneliness crept in, she knew how to work her way out … Or even better, how to sink in and absorb its particular comforts.

If you want to predict a person’s behavior, identify his or her incentives. Leo

The shelf held nothing of value and it held everything of value. It was the past they’d both endured and escaped. It was despair and hope. It was life and death.

Being somebody's looking glass is not your job.