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.

I'm not going anywhere without you. We're swimming to China together. And if the worst happens, I'm dying with you before I'm living without you.

Carmen didn't like change, and she certainly didn't like endings.

I did the searching and remembering, she did the disappearing and the forgetting.

How many times could you give up on someone you loved?

some people fall in love over and over again while some people can only do it once.

She glared at him, feeling the old frustration. Sometimes in his presence she felt the deepest connection to him, and other times she felt completely alone-as though any bond to him was her own bitter imagination.