“In my experience, people who don't stick around during the hard times weren't worth having around anyway.”
―
Kimberly Belle,
The Ones We Trust
“Secrets are a sneaky little seed. You can hide them, you can bury them, you can disguise them, and cover them up. But then just when you think your secret has rotted away and decayed into nothing, it stirs back to life. It sprouts roots and stems, crawls its way through the mud and muck, growing and climbing, and bursting through the surface, blooming for everyone to see. That's the lesson here. The truth always comes out eventually.” ― Kimberly Belle, The Ones We Trust
“The problem with half-truths, I'm discovering, is that they are also half-lies.” ― Kimberly Belle, The Ones We Trust
“They got to the classroom she and Jay shared this period, but it wasn’t Grady’s class. Instead of walking on, Grady paused.“Violet, can I talk to you for a minute?” His deep voice surprised her again.“Yeah, okay,” Violet agreed, curious about what he might have to say to her.Jay stopped and waited too, but when Grady didn’t say anything, it became clear that he’d meant he wanted to talk to her . . . alone.Jay suddenly seemed uncomfortable and tried to excuse himself as casually as he could. “I’ll see you inside,” he finally said to Violet.She nodded to him as he left.Violet was a little worried that the bell was going to ring and she’d be tardy again, but her curiosity had kicked up a notch when she realized that Grady didn’t want Jay to hear what he had to say, and that far outweighed her concern for late slips.When they were alone, and Grady didn’t start talking right away, Violet prompted him. “What’s going on?”She watched him swallow, and his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down along the length of his throat. It was strange to see her old guy friends in this new light. He’d always been a good-looking kid, but now he looked like a man . . . even though he still acted like a boy. He shifted back and forth, and if she had taken the time to think about it, she would have realized that he was nervous.But she misread his discomfort altogether. She thought that, like her, he was worried about being late. “Do you want to talk after school? I could meet you in the parking lot.”“No. No. Now’s good.” He ran his hand through his hair in a discouraged gesture. He took a deep breath, but his voice was still shaking when he spoke. “I . . . I was wondering . . .” He looked Violet right in the eye now, and suddenly she felt very nervous about where this might be going. She was desperately wishing she hadn’t let Jay leave her here alone. “I was wondering if you’re planning to go to Homecoming,” Grady finally blurted out.She stood there, looking at him, feeling trapped by the question and not sure what she was going to say.The bell rang, and both of them jumped.Violet was grateful for the excuse, and she clung to it like a life preserver. Her eyes were wide, and she pointed to the door behind her. “I gotta . . . can we . . .” She pointed again, and she knew she looked and sounded like an idiot, incapable of coherent speech. “Can we talk after school?”Grady seemed relieved to have been let off the hook for the moment. “Sure. Yeah. I’ll talk to you after school.”He left without saying good-bye, and Violet, thankful herself, tried to slip into her classroom unnoticed.But she had no such luck. The teacher marked her tardy, and everyone in class watched as she made her way to her seat beside Jay’s. Her face felt flushed and hot.“What was that all about?” Jay asked in a loud whisper.She still felt like her head was reeling. She had no idea what she was going to say to Grady when school was out. “I think Grady just asked me to Homecoming,” she announced to Jay.He looked at her suspiciously. “The game?”Violet cocked her head to the side and gave him a look that told him to be serious.“No, I’m pretty sure he meant the dance,” Violet clarified, exasperated by the obtuse question.Jay frowned at her. “What did you say?”“I didn’t say anything. The bell rang and I told him we’d have to talk later.”The teacher glanced their way, and they pretended not to be talking to each other.” ― Kimberly Derting, The Body Finder
“You feel safer in your bedroom, but you’re actually much safer in the shelter.” It didn’t matter how I felt. She made me go into the shelter every time the sirens wailed. Men came and removed all the signposts from the roads around the village, so that when Hitler invaded he wouldn’t know where he was. When he invaded, we were to bury our radio. Jamie had already dug a hole for it in the garden. When Hitler invaded we were to say nothing, do nothing to help the enemy. If he invaded while I was out riding, I was to return home at once, as fast as possible by the shortest route. I’d know it was an invasion, not an air raid, because all the church bells would ring. “What if the Germans take Butter?” I asked Susan. “They won’t,” she said, but I was sure she was lying. “Bloody huns,” Fred muttered, when I went to help with chores. “They come here, I’ll stab ’em with a pitchfork, I will.” Fred was not happy. The riding horses, the Thortons’ fine hunters, were all out to grass, and the grass was good, but the hayfields had been turned over to wheat and Fred didn’t know how he’d feed the horses through the winter. Plus the Land Girls staying in the loft annoyed him. “Work twelve hours a day, then go out dancing,” he said. “Bunch of lightfoots. In my day girls didn’t act like that.” I thought the Land Girls seemed friendly, but I knew better than to say so to Fred. You could get used to anything. After a few weeks, I didn’t panic when I went into the shelter. I quit worrying about the invasion. I put Jamie up behind me on Butter” ― Kimberly Brubaker Bradley, The War That Saved My Life
“Only an asshole stands in the way of soul mates.” ― Kimberly Belle, Dear Wife
“Dread begins to burrow under my skin like a parasite, slow and steady, eating away at my certainty.” ― Kimberly Belle, The Marriage Lie
“Chelsea was something else. Like an unstoppable force of nature. Similar to a hurricane or a tornado. Or a pit bull.Violet admired that about her.And, in this instance, Chelsea had proven to be nothing less than formidable.So when Jay had mentioned earlier in the week that they might be able to go to the movies over the weekend, Chelsea held him to it. A time and a place were chosen. And word spread. And, somehow, Chelsea managed to unravel it all.She still wanted the Saturday night plans; she just didn’t want the crowd that came with them. She’d decided it should be more of a “double date.” With Mike.Except Mike would never see it coming.By the time the bell rang at the end of lunch on Friday, everyone had agreed to meet up for the seven o’clock showing the next night. But when they split up to go to their classes, Chelsea set her own plan into motion. She began to separate the others from the pack and, one by one, they all fell.She started with Andrew Lauthner. Poor Andrew didn’t know what hit him.“Hey, Andy, did you hear?”From the look on his face, he didn’t hear anything other than that Chelsea-his Chelsea-was talking to him. Out of the blue. Violet needed to get to class, but she was dying to see what Chelsea had up her sleeve, so she stuck it out instead.“What?” His huge frozen grin looked like it had been plastered there and dried overnight.Chelsea’s expression was apologetic, something that may have actually been difficult for her to pull off. “The movie’s been canceled. Plans are off.” She stuck out her lower lip in a disappointed pout.“But I thought…” He seemed confused.So was Violet.“…didn’t we just make the plans at lunch?” he asked.“I know.” Chelsea managed to sound as surprised as he did. “But you know how Jay is, always talking out of his ass. He forgot to mention that he has to work tomorrow night and can’t make it.” She looked at Violet and said, again apologetically, “Sorry you had to hear that, Vi.”Violet just stood there gaping and thinking that she should deny what Chelsea was saying, but she wasn’t even sure where to start. She knew Jules would have done it. Where was Jules when she needed her?“What about everyone else?” Andrew asked, still clinging to hope.Chelsea shrugged and placed a sympathetic hand on Andrew’s arm. “Nope. No one else can make it either. Mike’s got family plans. Jules has a date. Claire has to study. And Violet here is grounded.” She draped an arm around Violet’s shoulder. “Right, Vi?”Violet was saved from having to answer, since Andrew didn’t seem to need one. Apparently, if Chelsea said it, it was the gospel truth. But the pathetic look on his face made Violet want to hug him right then and there."Oh," he finally said. And then, "Well, maybe next time.""Yeah. Sure. Of course," Chelsea called over her shoulder, already dragging Violet away from the painful scene."Geez, Chels, break his heart, why don't you? Why didn't you just say you have some rare disease or something?" Violet made a face at her friend. "Not cool."Chelsea scoffed. "He'll be fine. Besides, if I said 'disease,' he would have made me some chicken soup and offered to give me a sponge bath or something." She wrinkled her nose. "Eww."The rest of the afternoon went pretty much the same way, with a few escalations: Family obligations. Big tests to study for. House arrests. Chelsea made excuses to nearly everyone who'd planned on going, including Clair. She was relentless.By Saturday night, it was just the four of them...Violet, Jay, Chelsea, and, of course, Mike. It was everything Chelsea had dreamed of, everything she'd worked for.” ― Kimberly Derting, Desires of the Dead
“A very smart woman once told me that anger can feel like a life buoy, like it's the only thing keeping you afloat, but that in order to heal you have to let go.” ― Kimberly Belle, The Ones We Trust
“Not every question has an answer. Not every problem has a solution. But if you’re open for it, there is grace in uncertainty.” ― Kimberly Belle, Dear Wife
“When you know what to look for, spotting a lie is pretty easy. You see it in the fidgets and sudden head movements or sometimes, when the person is overcompensating, through no movements at all. In how their breathing changes, or how they provide too much information, repeating phrases and offering up irrelevant details. In the way they shuffle their feet or touch their mouths or put a hand to their throats. It’s basic psychology, physical signals that the body doesn’t agree with the words coming out of its mouth.” ― Kimberly Belle, The Marriage Lie
“That's what makes a tragedy a tragedy. There's no rhyme or reason to it, only heartbreak. The only thing you can do when the ground stops shaking and the waters recede is try to save whoever's left.” ― Kimberly Belle, The Ones We Trust
“It’s a trinity ring. Pink for love, yellow for fidelity and white for friendship. I liked the symbolism of three—you, me and baby-to-be.” ― Belle, Kimberly
“Uncertainty leaves us open to doubt, yes, but it also opens us up to splendor and joy and wonderful surprise. To the beauty of hope. Nothing is certain, nothing is known, but it is in those moments of our greatest uncertainty that miracles happen.” ― Kimberly Belle, Dear Wife
“There’s a sucker born every minute out of heartache.” ― Kimberly Belle, The Marriage Lie
“you can’t love only pieces of a person. You have to love all of them, even the ugly parts.” ― Kimberly Belle, Three Days Missing
“Almost” ― Kimberly Belle, The Marriage Lie
“College taught me to be a feminist, but marriage has taught me to be practical.” ― Kimberly Belle, The Marriage Lie
“I had to find love & inner peace to embrace my story” ― Kimberly Anne Bell, The Epitome of Kimmy: Accept & Embrace It All
“Secrets are a sneaky little seed. You can hide them, you can bury them, you can disguise them, and cover them up. But then just when you think your secret has rotted away and decayed into nothing, it stirs back to life. It sprouts roots and stems, crawls its way through the mud and muck, growing and climbing, and bursting through the surface, blooming for everyone to see. That's the lesson here. The truth always comes out eventually.” ― Kimberly Belle, The Ones We Trust
“The problem with half-truths, I'm discovering, is that they are also half-lies.” ― Kimberly Belle, The Ones We Trust
“They got to the classroom she and Jay shared this period, but it wasn’t Grady’s class. Instead of walking on, Grady paused.“Violet, can I talk to you for a minute?” His deep voice surprised her again.“Yeah, okay,” Violet agreed, curious about what he might have to say to her.Jay stopped and waited too, but when Grady didn’t say anything, it became clear that he’d meant he wanted to talk to her . . . alone.Jay suddenly seemed uncomfortable and tried to excuse himself as casually as he could. “I’ll see you inside,” he finally said to Violet.She nodded to him as he left.Violet was a little worried that the bell was going to ring and she’d be tardy again, but her curiosity had kicked up a notch when she realized that Grady didn’t want Jay to hear what he had to say, and that far outweighed her concern for late slips.When they were alone, and Grady didn’t start talking right away, Violet prompted him. “What’s going on?”She watched him swallow, and his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down along the length of his throat. It was strange to see her old guy friends in this new light. He’d always been a good-looking kid, but now he looked like a man . . . even though he still acted like a boy. He shifted back and forth, and if she had taken the time to think about it, she would have realized that he was nervous.But she misread his discomfort altogether. She thought that, like her, he was worried about being late. “Do you want to talk after school? I could meet you in the parking lot.”“No. No. Now’s good.” He ran his hand through his hair in a discouraged gesture. He took a deep breath, but his voice was still shaking when he spoke. “I . . . I was wondering . . .” He looked Violet right in the eye now, and suddenly she felt very nervous about where this might be going. She was desperately wishing she hadn’t let Jay leave her here alone. “I was wondering if you’re planning to go to Homecoming,” Grady finally blurted out.She stood there, looking at him, feeling trapped by the question and not sure what she was going to say.The bell rang, and both of them jumped.Violet was grateful for the excuse, and she clung to it like a life preserver. Her eyes were wide, and she pointed to the door behind her. “I gotta . . . can we . . .” She pointed again, and she knew she looked and sounded like an idiot, incapable of coherent speech. “Can we talk after school?”Grady seemed relieved to have been let off the hook for the moment. “Sure. Yeah. I’ll talk to you after school.”He left without saying good-bye, and Violet, thankful herself, tried to slip into her classroom unnoticed.But she had no such luck. The teacher marked her tardy, and everyone in class watched as she made her way to her seat beside Jay’s. Her face felt flushed and hot.“What was that all about?” Jay asked in a loud whisper.She still felt like her head was reeling. She had no idea what she was going to say to Grady when school was out. “I think Grady just asked me to Homecoming,” she announced to Jay.He looked at her suspiciously. “The game?”Violet cocked her head to the side and gave him a look that told him to be serious.“No, I’m pretty sure he meant the dance,” Violet clarified, exasperated by the obtuse question.Jay frowned at her. “What did you say?”“I didn’t say anything. The bell rang and I told him we’d have to talk later.”The teacher glanced their way, and they pretended not to be talking to each other.” ― Kimberly Derting, The Body Finder
“You feel safer in your bedroom, but you’re actually much safer in the shelter.” It didn’t matter how I felt. She made me go into the shelter every time the sirens wailed. Men came and removed all the signposts from the roads around the village, so that when Hitler invaded he wouldn’t know where he was. When he invaded, we were to bury our radio. Jamie had already dug a hole for it in the garden. When Hitler invaded we were to say nothing, do nothing to help the enemy. If he invaded while I was out riding, I was to return home at once, as fast as possible by the shortest route. I’d know it was an invasion, not an air raid, because all the church bells would ring. “What if the Germans take Butter?” I asked Susan. “They won’t,” she said, but I was sure she was lying. “Bloody huns,” Fred muttered, when I went to help with chores. “They come here, I’ll stab ’em with a pitchfork, I will.” Fred was not happy. The riding horses, the Thortons’ fine hunters, were all out to grass, and the grass was good, but the hayfields had been turned over to wheat and Fred didn’t know how he’d feed the horses through the winter. Plus the Land Girls staying in the loft annoyed him. “Work twelve hours a day, then go out dancing,” he said. “Bunch of lightfoots. In my day girls didn’t act like that.” I thought the Land Girls seemed friendly, but I knew better than to say so to Fred. You could get used to anything. After a few weeks, I didn’t panic when I went into the shelter. I quit worrying about the invasion. I put Jamie up behind me on Butter” ― Kimberly Brubaker Bradley, The War That Saved My Life
“Only an asshole stands in the way of soul mates.” ― Kimberly Belle, Dear Wife
“Dread begins to burrow under my skin like a parasite, slow and steady, eating away at my certainty.” ― Kimberly Belle, The Marriage Lie
“Chelsea was something else. Like an unstoppable force of nature. Similar to a hurricane or a tornado. Or a pit bull.Violet admired that about her.And, in this instance, Chelsea had proven to be nothing less than formidable.So when Jay had mentioned earlier in the week that they might be able to go to the movies over the weekend, Chelsea held him to it. A time and a place were chosen. And word spread. And, somehow, Chelsea managed to unravel it all.She still wanted the Saturday night plans; she just didn’t want the crowd that came with them. She’d decided it should be more of a “double date.” With Mike.Except Mike would never see it coming.By the time the bell rang at the end of lunch on Friday, everyone had agreed to meet up for the seven o’clock showing the next night. But when they split up to go to their classes, Chelsea set her own plan into motion. She began to separate the others from the pack and, one by one, they all fell.She started with Andrew Lauthner. Poor Andrew didn’t know what hit him.“Hey, Andy, did you hear?”From the look on his face, he didn’t hear anything other than that Chelsea-his Chelsea-was talking to him. Out of the blue. Violet needed to get to class, but she was dying to see what Chelsea had up her sleeve, so she stuck it out instead.“What?” His huge frozen grin looked like it had been plastered there and dried overnight.Chelsea’s expression was apologetic, something that may have actually been difficult for her to pull off. “The movie’s been canceled. Plans are off.” She stuck out her lower lip in a disappointed pout.“But I thought…” He seemed confused.So was Violet.“…didn’t we just make the plans at lunch?” he asked.“I know.” Chelsea managed to sound as surprised as he did. “But you know how Jay is, always talking out of his ass. He forgot to mention that he has to work tomorrow night and can’t make it.” She looked at Violet and said, again apologetically, “Sorry you had to hear that, Vi.”Violet just stood there gaping and thinking that she should deny what Chelsea was saying, but she wasn’t even sure where to start. She knew Jules would have done it. Where was Jules when she needed her?“What about everyone else?” Andrew asked, still clinging to hope.Chelsea shrugged and placed a sympathetic hand on Andrew’s arm. “Nope. No one else can make it either. Mike’s got family plans. Jules has a date. Claire has to study. And Violet here is grounded.” She draped an arm around Violet’s shoulder. “Right, Vi?”Violet was saved from having to answer, since Andrew didn’t seem to need one. Apparently, if Chelsea said it, it was the gospel truth. But the pathetic look on his face made Violet want to hug him right then and there."Oh," he finally said. And then, "Well, maybe next time.""Yeah. Sure. Of course," Chelsea called over her shoulder, already dragging Violet away from the painful scene."Geez, Chels, break his heart, why don't you? Why didn't you just say you have some rare disease or something?" Violet made a face at her friend. "Not cool."Chelsea scoffed. "He'll be fine. Besides, if I said 'disease,' he would have made me some chicken soup and offered to give me a sponge bath or something." She wrinkled her nose. "Eww."The rest of the afternoon went pretty much the same way, with a few escalations: Family obligations. Big tests to study for. House arrests. Chelsea made excuses to nearly everyone who'd planned on going, including Clair. She was relentless.By Saturday night, it was just the four of them...Violet, Jay, Chelsea, and, of course, Mike. It was everything Chelsea had dreamed of, everything she'd worked for.” ― Kimberly Derting, Desires of the Dead
“A very smart woman once told me that anger can feel like a life buoy, like it's the only thing keeping you afloat, but that in order to heal you have to let go.” ― Kimberly Belle, The Ones We Trust
“Not every question has an answer. Not every problem has a solution. But if you’re open for it, there is grace in uncertainty.” ― Kimberly Belle, Dear Wife
“When you know what to look for, spotting a lie is pretty easy. You see it in the fidgets and sudden head movements or sometimes, when the person is overcompensating, through no movements at all. In how their breathing changes, or how they provide too much information, repeating phrases and offering up irrelevant details. In the way they shuffle their feet or touch their mouths or put a hand to their throats. It’s basic psychology, physical signals that the body doesn’t agree with the words coming out of its mouth.” ― Kimberly Belle, The Marriage Lie
“That's what makes a tragedy a tragedy. There's no rhyme or reason to it, only heartbreak. The only thing you can do when the ground stops shaking and the waters recede is try to save whoever's left.” ― Kimberly Belle, The Ones We Trust
“It’s a trinity ring. Pink for love, yellow for fidelity and white for friendship. I liked the symbolism of three—you, me and baby-to-be.” ― Belle, Kimberly
“Uncertainty leaves us open to doubt, yes, but it also opens us up to splendor and joy and wonderful surprise. To the beauty of hope. Nothing is certain, nothing is known, but it is in those moments of our greatest uncertainty that miracles happen.” ― Kimberly Belle, Dear Wife
“There’s a sucker born every minute out of heartache.” ― Kimberly Belle, The Marriage Lie
“you can’t love only pieces of a person. You have to love all of them, even the ugly parts.” ― Kimberly Belle, Three Days Missing
“Almost” ― Kimberly Belle, The Marriage Lie
“College taught me to be a feminist, but marriage has taught me to be practical.” ― Kimberly Belle, The Marriage Lie
“I had to find love & inner peace to embrace my story” ― Kimberly Anne Bell, The Epitome of Kimmy: Accept & Embrace It All
