You … You had always made the future feel safe. As long as you were in it too, beside me, I could be okay.

This is just one of those annoying and unjust differences between you and your younger sibling...I was probably fifteen before I could go to a friend's house without giving mom an FBI dossier on the people; Bex can practically hitchhike on the freeway with a mere "Have fun, honey.

You … You had always made the future feel safe. As long as you were in it too, beside me, I could be okay.

We don't want you convicted for condiment theft. You go to that prison, you'll meet big-time operators. Maple syrup stealers.

But, dear God, don't listen to me. I'm an old lady in the middle of nowhere without a real toilet.

Each story, good and bad, short or long-from that trip to the mall when you saw Santa, to a long, bad illness-they are all a line or a paragraph in our own life manuscript. Two thirds of the way through, even, and it all won't necessarily make sense, but at the end there'll be a beautiful whole, where every sentence of every chapter fits.

Empathy took the edge off, and the truth is, we need our edge. Our edge is trying to speak to us, and we are too, too good at shutting it up.