“Someone once told Hester that memories hurt, the good ones most of all. As she got older, Hester realized just how true that was.”

Although it has been years since Hester Crimstein’s son, David, and her husband, Ira, passed away, Hester can’t let go of their memories and her trauma at losing them. This will affect her choices and behaviors throughout the novel as she struggles with The Tension Between Love and Grief. However, this ongoing struggle with loss will also help her connect with Delia Maynard later in the book.

“Wilde was Matthew’s godfather. When David died, Wilde had been there. He answered the call, stepped up his role in Matthew’s life. He wasn’t a father or stepfather or anything like that. But Wilde was there, more as an involved uncle, and Hester and Laila had been grateful, believing, sexist as this might sound, that Matthew still needed a man in his life.

How would the romantic relationship between Laila and Wilde affect Matthew?”

This quote represents one of Wilde’s major roles in the novel and the themes of Biological, Adoptive, and Chosen Family and The Tension Between Love and Grief. After David’s death, Wilde becomes a father figure for Matthew, but in a tenuous, liminal way—his personal relationship with Matthew is a parental one, but he has no legal standing to support this. Therefore, any changes within the Crimstein family—for example, Laila dating someone, whether or not this someone is Wilde—can affect both Wilde’s standing in the family and, by extension, his relationship with and influence over Matthew.

“He loved history, always had, though he had no interest, thank you very much, in being a part of it.”

Dash Maynard is always filming—his “interest” in history has always been through a viewfinder or camera lens. However, he prefers the role of voyeur to actor and has little practice in the spotlight.