That was the horror of it. We all secretly hope that tragedy will only ever happen to other people... sooner or later, it happens to you. - Alex Michaelides

No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.

Once you kill another human being there is no going back… it’s a bit like being reborn, I suppose. But no ordinary birth—it’s a metamorphosis. What emerges from the ashes is not a phoenix, but an uglier creature: deformed, incapable of flight, a predator using its claws to cut and rip.

There was a word for this moment in Greek tragedy: anagnorisis—recognition—the moment the hero finally sees the truth and understands his fate—and how it’s always been there, the whole time, in front of him. Mariana used to wonder what that moment felt like. Now she knew.