Re: hannah and david: woods
She shook her head, and her smile remained there, a moonbeam-lit thing of too much knowing and too much understanding. "No, it wasn't like that. It sounds romantic when you say it, but it wasn't really. It was like a pantomime of romance, a thing gilded but without the feelings. He hired me, when I was a prostitute, and I think he liked the romantic-hero notion of falling in love with me and making my life better. I never loved him, and I told him and told him. I care about him, and I liked the idea of that life, but that's not the same as love." Her smile warmed. "I haven't ever been like you, David. You loved Molly. I never loved Marcus, either. He was escape, and he was a bad choice, but it was never love, not even when he pushed my veil up."
But of course she thirsted for information about Molly. Nothing with Molly would ever be new. Nothing for her and Molly together, and so David's stories, they were everything. Mars didn't remember, and Jamie didn't remember, and Si had left home at seventeen. The only person with stories beyond teenage years, was David. "I think I would like devouring someone," she said expression going thoughtful and clouded with considerations. A tip of her head, a dark smile, something that made it evident she wasn't all sunshine and bright days. And he was clenching his hands as he spoke, and she watched, and then she lifted her gaze to his face again. "I think we all keep secrets," she said finally, of herself, of Molly, of the entire family, and maybe of everyone, ever. Of him.
A shrug of shoulders and his words were a balm she didn't realize she needed. "Rey just said I was me, and that there wasn't anyone else there," she explained, and she'd needed to hear that, maybe, and from someone who didn't know, someone impartial, someone without bias and who didn't love her or hate her. "I don't know what I was before, but I think you're right now, and yet I kind of don't want some people making that leap, knowing. Some people call me Amy, and I bristle. And some people do it, and it feels like homecoming." His smile was crooked. "But you can call me that, if you want," she told him, and then she returned to small steps, unhurried, as she thought about Mars a moment longer. "Mars has always been angry. Do you know about where she went, about why, about how?" she asked, because Dad had told them all a lie, and so perhaps Molly hadn't known to tell him.