Henry loves my hair almost as though it is a creature unto itself, as though it has a soul to call its own, as though it could love him back.

I am suddenly comsumed by nostalgia for the little girl who was me, who loved the fields and believed in God, who spent winter days home sick from school reading Nancy Drew and sucking menthol cough drops, who could keep a secret.

Martin said, "It feels as though part of my self has detached and gone to Amsterdam, where it—she—is waiting for me. Do you know about phantom-limb syndrome?" Julia nodded. "There's pain where she ought to be. It's feeding the other pain, the thing that makes me wash and count and all that. So her absence is stopping me from going to find her. Do you see?

I keep myself busy. Time goes faster that way.

He thanked her and left the house in the mood of a shipwrecked man who has allowed the rescue ship to pass him by.

I still feel like a castaway, th elast of a once numerous species. It was as though Robinson Crusoe discovered the telltale footprint on the beach and then realized that it was his own. Myself, small as a leaf, thin as water, begins to cry.

He had never realized, while Elspeth was alive, the extent to which a thing had not completely happened until he told her about it.