There should be a stronger word than regret.

vim

Even in love Lina understands there is competition—a frantic need to be the one who will hurt less than the other.

Lina is having a mental breakdown because nobody cares. Nobody died, so nobody cares. She feels that she’s suffocating.

This is an outlandish notion only if you don’t know how a person can destroy you by the simple act of disappearing.

Sometimes there’s nothing better on earth than someone asking you a question.

The problem, she’s starting to understand, is that a man will never let you fall completely into hell. He will scoop you up right before you drop the final inch so that you cannot blame him for sending you there. He keeps you in a dinerlike purgatory instead, waiting and hoping and taking orders. He

Her mother never let her be alone with her father. So in a way she has no idea whether her father might have been the sort of man to ease her troubles.

Often the type of waiting women do is to make sure other women approve, so that they may also approve of themselves.