Those were the people who made her something, and without them she was different. She'd held on to them and to that old self tenaciously, though. She clung to it, celebrated it, worshipped it even, instead of constructing a new grown-up life for herself. For years she'd been eating the cold crumbs left over from a great feast, living on them as though they could last her forever.

I told him, though, that he better be good to you. When you came along, I said I'd share you, but I told him to remember that you're my sister. I loved you first.

A part of her wanted to tell him she still loved him, and that even though this love was hopeless and long over, it still consumed her year after year. It was a tangled hairball of feelings and she couldn't pull forth any one strand.

The phone was her worst enemy and her best friend but she never knew which until she answered it.

But it was smell that carried memory.

Wish for what you want, work for what you need. -Carmen's grandmother

She was alive, and they were dead. She had to try to make her life big. As big as she could. She promised Bailey she would keep playing.