the last book I ever read (Mary Coin by Marisa Silver, excerpt eleven)

from Marisa Silver's Mary Coin:

Now, Mary thought. Time was always being split between then and now. Then she had been a child in Tahlequah. Now she was a mother in California learning how to care for babies. Then Toby had been alive, now he was dead and she’d had to bury him and accept other men into her bed for reasons besides love. Then she had seven children. Now she had six. Except this separation of time was a false one. Because you never stopped being one thing when you became the other.