And in a small house five miles away was a man who held my mud-encrusted charm bracelet out to his wife. Look what I found at the old industrial park," he said. "A construction guy said they were bulldozing the whole lot. They're afraid of sink holes like that one that swallowed the cars." His wife poured him some water from the sink as he fingered the tiny bike and the ballet shoe, the flower basket and the thimble. He held out the muddy bracelet as she set down his glass. This little girl's grown up by now," she said. Almost. Not quite. I wish you all a long and happy life.

I would like to tell you that I am, and you will one day be, forever safe.

But she was waiting patiently. She no longer believed in talk. It never rescued anything. At seventy she had come to believe in time alone. ~pg 254

The damage can fester under layers of time and change, and an ignorant, thoughtless remark can easily reopen the wound.

Sometimes you cry, Susie, even when someone you love has been gone a long time.

Once released from life, having lost it in such violence, I couldn’t calculate my steps. I didn’t have time for contemplation. In violence it is the getting out that you concentrate on. When you begin to go over the edge, life receding from you as a boat recedes inevitably from the shore, you hold on to death tightly, like a rope that will transport you, and you swing out on it, hoping to land away from where you are.

You're not supposed to look back, you're supposed to keep going.