The Lake House

“She didn’t add that in her experience, no matter how hard a person ran, no matter how fresh the start they gave themselves, the past had a way of reaching across the years to catch them.” 

It is not difficult for the reader to imagine that Sadie, as a detective, has repeatedly seen someone try to escape their past without success. However, the reader already knows that someone buried something on the grounds of Loeanneth that never want found, and that Sadie herself is bothered by something in her past. The above quote foreshadows future events and hints that the past will catch up with the present.

“It didn’t seem right, somehow, that a person’s life should be derailed twice by one mistake.” 

It has already been revealed that Sadie is facing more than one problem. But beyond that, this sentence links the fates of multiple characters and alludes to the fact that Sadie is most likely not the only one who will have to pay more than once for a past mistake. As the reader later learns, this is exactly the case for the novel’s three major female characters.

“She wasn’t talking about magic. She was talking about an essential truth. Love as a fait accompli, a matter of fact, rather than a mutually beneficial arrangement between two suitable parties.” 

In this quote, Alice describes the plot of her proposed novel to Ben. In her manuscript, love is why the woman helps the man kidnap the young boy. Ironically enough, though it doesn’t play out like Alice’s story, love is what motivates Ben and Eleanor to place Theo in another’s care. Rather than bring them closer together, this act divides them forever.