There are moments in your life when the big pieces slide and shift. Sometimes the big changes dong happen gradually but all at once. That's how it was for us. That was the day we discovered that friends can do things for you that your parents can't.

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.

But like everything else, love changed.

Once Paul told her that the beach was like him because it changed every day but it never made any progress. Later she remembered thinking that a normal person might have begun by saying that he was like the beach.

Please don't judge me too much until you are older and know more things. (Spoken from mother to daughter)

I want to go where you're going. I'm not scared of dying. I want to stay together and come back together. You said that souls cohere. I want to stay with you.

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.