The difficulty lay with the mind accommodating itself to the notion of the plane, with all its weight, defying gravity, staying aloft. She understood the aerodynamics of flight, could comprehend the laws of physics that made flight possible, but her heart, at the moment, would have none of it. Her heart knew the plane could fall out of the sky.

the enduring struggle to capture in words the infinite possibilities of a life not lived.

Among other things, Kathryn knew, grief was physically exhausting.

I think about the hurt that stories cannot ease, not with a thousand tellings.

The things that don't happen to us that we'll never know didn't happen to us. The nonstories. The extra minute to find the briefcase that makes you late to the spot where a tractor trailer mauled another car instead of yours. The woman you didn't meet because she couldn't get a taxi to the party you had to leave early from. All of life is a series of nonstories if you look at it that way. We just don't know what they are.

I loved him," Muire said. "We were in love." As if that were enough.

love is ... something extraordinary that happens to ordinary people.