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The truth is that Olive did not understand why age had brought with it a kind of hard-heartdness toward her husband. But it was something she had seemed unable to help, as though the stone wall that had rambled along between them during the course of their long marriage - a stone wall that separated them but also provided unexpected dips of moss-covered warm spots where sunshine would flicker between them in a sudden laugh of understanding - had become tall and unyielding, and not providing flowers in its crannies but some ice storm frozen along it instead. In other words, something had come between them that seemed insurmountable. She could, on certain days, point out to herself the addition of a boulder here, a pile of rocks there [...] but she still did not understand why they should walk into old age with this high and horrible wall between them. And it was her fault. Because as her heart become more constricted, Henry's heart became needier, and when he walked up behind her in the house sometimes to slip his arms around her, it was all she could do to not visibly shudder. Stop!, she wanted to shout. (But why? What crime had he been committing, except to ask her love?)
Elizabeth Strout – Olive, Again (2019)
Penguin Random House UK (2019)
