Quotes from Gregg Olsen

You can't change what a person knows, even if it is wrong," the nurse had said.

How can we think we're so important the world reacts to our whims or decisions or mistakes?

After grabbing a sandwich to eat on the way, Lindsay listened to the overly cheerful guidance from her GPS as she drove from Bellingham to Everett, a somewhat sad mill city north of Seattle that seemed always on a futile hunt for a lasting jolt of optimism.

I'm sitting on a barstool in her kitchen while she hovers over me. "Right," I tell Stacy. "One night. That's all.

During the trip they put up for hours at a time with Josh, his pet bird, his berating Susan, his ignoring one-year-old Charlie, his lateness, his disrespect, and his completely annoying cheapness.

Kathy's death, and what he'd done to get rid of her body, was an anvil pitched on Dave's shoulders. He knew he could never erase what he'd done. He thought of how Kathy's family would always wonder where she'd gone, and if she was happy.

dropped her hands, which were clenched

A garage is not always a way station for things destined for the dump, but a living and breathing memory album of moments shared. And promises of more moments to come.

That morning stays in my head like a graphic novel, images telling the story in bold swaths of black and white with smudges of jolting color roaring out of the lines.

We became friends over detective fiction. She's a true friend.

For someone who always had so much to hide, Shelly had become an expert at keeping things out of view. It was a skill that would help her keep the darkest secrets from her family.

I wish we could shrink her," Sami suggested. "Make her supersmall and put her in a cage." Nikki liked the idea but saw a pitfall. "She'd get out and bite our ankles!

It seems there are no do-overs for bad mothers.

She couldn't face what was really happening. Routine brought comfort.

She used to chop up bits of glass and put them in the bottom of [the kids'] boots and shoes

Rain started to fall. She looked up and regarded the crack in the gray sky. It was spring, and the weather had—in typical Pacific Northwest fashion—forgotten the season.

I love her so much that it hurts sometimes. People who don't have a dog can't know how it feels, just like those who don't have children can't understand that kind of love. They aren't the same, of course. But both are real.

We were never anything more than something she could manipulate

brittle. "I

reassuringly.

Washaway Beach, a spot on the Washington Coast known for its rapidly eroding beach, where ghost cabins and trailers hang over the swirling ocean and surfers ride the gray waves in the distance.

I've never felt like this before. I'm a snake shedding my skin. A pupa hatching into a butterfly.

Getting rid of a body did not get easier as he got more practiced at it.

Ben Franklin once said three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead.