REMEMBERING WHAT’S HIDDEN: A Novel

For forty years, Ruth has answered every question with the same word: fine.Fine when the children needed her. Fine when the marriage went quiet. Fine at the mirror; on the mornings she cannot remember the last time she felt anything at all. The flatness has a way of looking like coping. Nobody thinks to ask what is underneath it-least of all Ruth.Then Lindi moves in across the street. A neighbor with imperfect cookies and an unhurried way of paying attention, Lindi notices the one thing Ruth has spent a lifetime hiding. She does not fix it or name it or tell Ruth what to do. She simply keeps showing up, in small ordinary moments, until Ruth begins to see it too.What follows is a quiet unraveling of everything Ruth mistook for peace-the stress her body stopped registering as stress, the marriage that slipped to last place without a fight, the person she buried so far beneath function she forgot she was there.Remembering What's Hidden is a tender, faith-woven novel about numbness and awakening, about the friends who see us before we can see ourselves, and about the truth every woman who has ever said "fine" already suspects: you cannot move toward what you cannot name.