We forgive and forget. At least I forgive and he forgets.

They needed to grieve alone was what Tibby's dad said. Lena wondered if really there was any choice in that. Everyone grieved alone.

And I thought about the color and I realized what blue it was. It was the soft and changeable, essential blue of a well-worn pair of pants. Pants = Love

They were here all at once, but not together. Survival took self-absorption, and it made them strangers with nothing to do and no way to relate. Emergencies gave you a shape and a plot to take part in, while death was no story at all. It left you nothing.

What happened to me by myself felt partly dreamed, partly imagined, definitely shifted and warped by my own fears and wants. But who knows? Maybe there is more truth in how you feel than in what actually happens.

She existed in her friends; there she was. All the parts of herself she'd forgotten. She knew herself best when she was with them.

But I know this. We're ready to move forward again in our way. Together or apart, no matter how far apart, we live in one another. We go on together.