Everneath Compassion and Forgiveness Quotes

Ouch. When Nikki is a new Return to our world, and her emotions are all raw and empty and stuff, she can sense other people's feelings. And to know that her dad is unhappy with her for disappearing, well, that's rough. What will it take for Nikki's dad to forgive her?

Nikki feels really badly about the way she left things with her dad. Like, big time. She's not sure if she can redeem herself in his eyes, but she's sure going to try. She decides to play by his rules (including going to school, keeping up her grades, and peeing in a cup every so often) in order to demonstrate her good will during her Return.

Nikki's dad is a by-the-book kind of guy, so he wants Nikki to do community service now that she's returned from her strung-out drug-spree (or whatever it is he thinks she was doing during her absence). It raises a good point: When someone misbehaves, how do they make amends? Do they makes amends just to the people they've wronged, or to the community as a whole?

During this conversation with Mary, Nikki tries to reassure her that people who are close to you will forgive you. But… will they? Once we meet Mary/Meredith's mom later in the story, we get the sense that she's kind of cold and distant and is probably not that interested in forgiving her errant daughter. Nikki seems to need this hope for herself, though.

When Nikki has this thought about Jack, she finally verbalizes the source of so much angst. She feels that Jack wronged her by giving the impression that he'd hooked up with Lacey at football camp, and yet she still cares about him and craves his affection. So is this really more about Nikki forgiving Jack, or Nikki forgiving herself for running off to the Everneath before Jack could explain himself?

Nikki is devastated when they get the news that the drunk driver who killed her mom is being released. But it's worse when she overhears her dad on the phone talking to the press, saying all this stuff about forgiveness. Has Nikki forgiven her mom's killer? Nope. Now she also has to grapple with whether to forgive her dad for forgiving the dude. Whew. Keeping track of who needs to forgive whom is kind of exhausting.

Mary—the crazy old lady who comes to eat at the soup kitchen—asks Jack if he's forgiven Nikki yet. Um, what? How does Mary even know they have a history? It's a little jarring to have a complete stranger ask if you've forgiven your girlfriend who ditched you mysteriously… but then again, there's more to the story than meets the eye here.

Nikki has this conversation with her dad later in the book, and it shows that they've worked on some of the earlier problems in their relationship. Nikki is explicit about making amends, and her dad accepts her apology. That's a good start, right?

When the Tunnels come for Nikki, she fully intends to meet her fate and accept the consequences of her earlier actions. Then Jack figures out that he can take her place. This makes Nikki angry—she says she'll never forgive him if he does it. But guess what? In the end, she doesn't really have a choice, not if she wants to help him maintain a sense of self in the Tunnels (since they need a two-way emotional connection to do that).

Nikki dreams of Jack every night after he takes her place in the Tunnels, but her guilt is still overwhelming, and she apologizes over and over until he tells her to knock it off. Seems like Jack has forgiven Nikki… but will Nikki ever forgive herself?