I was going there for both of us.

She had been abandoned by the family that owed her care, and I had been crushed under the weight of giving care to everyone and receiving it from no one, and we found in each other, without ever naming it, the exact thing we had each been starving for.

Chapter 6 — The Chocolates

I cannot tell you the exact day it stopped being a job, because it did not happen on a single day.

It happened the way the tide comes in, so gradually that you do not notice the water rising until suddenly you are standing in it.