"I slept in the chest, when I was newborn. My mother told me how she wrapped me in a shawl at night and hid me from my father.

"He would've smothered you, she said, without malice but with a strange sense of pride, as if I were a Rescue kitten she had taken in." Part 1, Waiting, pg. 5

"Mary is in a state of mute blankness. A girl baby, yet again. In her head, she wonders what to call me - she's exhausted her list of Saints' names on the boys she never bore, and is sick of all the arias in the names her girls have got." Part 1, Chapter 1, pg. 15

"My father moves from the mirror to the sideboard, stops his breath as he pulls open the drawer. His eyes stay on the doorway, watching the shadows on the kitchen wall while his hand slides over bills and...