I spend the rest of the afternoon trying to explain to Zoe one of the very saddest notions in love and life: sometimes the timing is wrong--and sometimes you realize the heart of the matter way to late in the game.

The person who wants out of the relationship always gets her way.

It was about grace, she decides, something that has been missing from her own life. ... She wants to be the kind of person who can bestow unearned kindness on another, replace bitterness with empathy, forgive only for the sake of forgiving.

Luck is buying a lottery ticket along with your Yoo-hoo and striking it rich. Nothing about my life is lucky- it is all about hard work, it is all uphill struggle.

And then there is Darcy. She is a woman who believes that things should fall into her lap, and, consequently, they do. They always have. She wins because she expects to win. I do not expect what I want, so I dont. And I dont even try.

He nods, as if to acknowledge that endings are almost always a little sad, even when there is something to look forward to on the other side.

I try to be true to the characters that I've created and sometimes I disagree with them, but their opinions about the story and the characters really matter to me.