"All of us grow up in particular realities - a home, family, a clan, a small town, a neighborhood. Depending upon how we're brought up, we are either deeply aware of the particular reading of reality into which we are born, or we are peripherally aware of it."
...
His family loved Christmas. His house seemed to contain no mysteries, to her jealousy and wonder.
From this period, buried under crisis, she knew she was unreliable witness, that she could not be true to the events unfolding, only the impressions they left her with.
Therein lay the problem.
...
It was the Christmas her brother's brain set fire.
It was the Christmas her grandparents began to die.
It was the Christmas mother lost twelve pounds overnight.
It was the Christmas she had walking pneumonia for six weeks without knowing.
It was the Christmas she had a cyst that could've been cancer, but was really a left-over from when she was a fish.
Branchial cleft cysts act like cancer but are remnants of embryonic development and result from a failure of obliteration of the branchial cleft, which in fish develop into gills.
Although it was odd to picture herself as a fish, it felt biblical, fitting.
It was the Christmas she had learned to breathe under water.
...
"You're turning twenty five, Kate. Wow."
"I feel twenty five."
"Yeah? How's it going with that guy? Are you going to marry him?"
"I don't feel like we're going to move backwards."
