“Hi. My name is Nicole, more often Nicky. A while ago I got this compulsion to write down the story of my first thirty years. It could have been entirely ordinary, the usual family and job, but instead it's all twisted. I grew up loving a few good friends and a lot of books. My father had plenty of bad ideas that he could get vicious about. So did my first husband. And, thanks to a genetic anomaly, my family has secrets. I got my first hint of the effects at age four, when I started having nightmares about a cold, dark emptiness that felt like a real place. Eventually I found out how real it was, and that there was more, and how it could lead to disaster, or maybe to bliss. It got my daughter kidnapped, put my grandmother through twenty-six years of hell, almost killed the man I love, and then saved him. Sometimes we've all had to be a lot stronger than we ever wanted to be. Sometimes that hasn't been enough. But you know, it all works out in the end—or might, if there was one.”
“Hi. My name is Nicole, more often Nicky. A while ago I got this compulsion to write down the story of my first thirty years. It could have been entirely ordinary, the usual family and job, but instead it's all twisted. I grew up loving a few good friends and a lot of books. My father had plenty of bad ideas that he could get vicious about. So did my first husband. And, thanks to a genetic anomaly, my family has secrets. I got my first hint of the effects at age four, when I started having nightmares about a cold, dark emptiness that felt like a real place. Eventually I found out how real it was, and that there was more, and how it could lead to disaster, or maybe to bliss. It got my daughter kidnapped, put my grandmother through twenty-six years of hell, almost killed the man I love, and then saved him. Sometimes we've all had to be a lot stronger than we ever wanted to be. Sometimes that hasn't been enough. But you know, it all works out in the end—or might, if there was one.”