Time passes and I am still not through it. Grief isn't something you get over. You live with it. You go on on with it lodged in you. Sometimes I feel like I have swallowed a pile of stones. Grief makes me heavy. It makes me slow. Even on days when I laugh a lot, or dance, or finish a project, or meet a deadline, or celebrate, or make love, it is there. Lodged deep inside of me.

The only language she could speak was grief. How could he not know that? Instead, she said, "I love you." She did. She loved him. But even that didn't feel like anything anymore.

My cousins and I used to play Beatle wives. We all wanted to be married to Paul, but John was O.K. too. None of us wanted Ringo. Or even worse, George.

No mother should lose her child.

Time doesn't heal, I had learned, it just keeps moving. And it takes us with it.

In Orphan Train, Christina Baker Kline seamlessly knits together the past and present of two women, one young and one old. Kline reminds us that we never really lose anyone or anything or – perhaps most importantly – ourselves.

My daughter, Grace, was not killed by a gun. She died suddenly at age 5 from a virulent form of strep. As I stood stunned in a church at her memorial, one of the hardest things I heard someone say was, 'I'm going to go home and hug my child a little tighter.' 'Well, good for you,' I thought. 'I'm going to go home and scream.'