Why the hell don't people understand there are some things you don't talk about? You keep it to yourself so you hurt fewer people. You're supposed to pay with guilt. Guilt is penance.

She'd wanted that, a grandfather. Someone who would stay. Michel had an eyetooth that turned sideways and she loved it more than anything else in the world. But someone wasn't yours because you loved a tooth.

She'd started swimming early in the morning, when the kids were asleep, when she thought he was asleep. She didn't know her absence woke him, that the shift in the bed was an earthquake. When she climbed back in, she smelled like salt and seaweed. Sometimes her hair would still be knotted on top of her head. She tried to keep it dry. She didn't want him to know. The problem with marrying the mermaid girl from the carnival was knowing that one day she'd swim away.

But there are some born to do penance by nature. Maybe they lift the load for some of us who take it quite comfortably that we're humankind, and not angels.

I have been doing penance for that ever since.

A penitência, recordou o meu irmão, é um lugar muito solitário.