She must have sensed she never really had him. That was a sadness of hers, he knew.

Someday was the thing he had, because it was a lot harder to ruin than today.

Tibby cried into her soup when it finally came. "I'm scared... ," she told it. The carrots and peas made no reply, but she felt better for having told them.

She realized all at once the deeper thing that bothered her, the thing that made him not just irritating but intolerable: how he kept loving her blindly when she deserved it so little.

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.

She knew whose love she doubted. It wasn't her parents' and it wasn't her friends: It was her own.

It was their mothers, long ago. Tibby noted with joy that all four of them were wearing jeans.