Hey, Ocean Eyes,” my father said. “Where’d you go on us?

If I shut my eyes, I believed, I would disappear. To make it through, I had to be present the whole time.

What did dead mean, Ray wondered. It meant lost, it meant frozen, it meant gone.

How to Commit the Perfect Murder" was an old game in heaven. I always chose the icicle: the weapon melts away.

When I was raped I lost my virginity and almost lost my life. I also discarded certain assumptions I had held about how the world worked and about how safe I was.

So there are cakes and pillows and colors galore, but underneath this more obvious patchwork quilt are places like a quiet room where you can go and hold someone's hand and not have to say anything.

Last night it had been my father who had finally said it: "She’s never coming home." A clear and easy piece of truth that everyone who had ever known me had accepted. But he needed to say it, and she needed to hear him say it.