And before he can tell her to tell Widget goodbye for him if need be, she leans forward and kisses him, not on the cheek, as she has a handful of times before, but on the lips, and Bailey knows in that moment that he will follow her anywhere.

It's helpful for me to get ideas - the physical action of painting. Sometimes it frees up your writer brain. It's nice for me now that the writing has become a serious career that painting can become more like a hobby.

How are you managing to keep everyone from aging?” Celia asks after a while. “Very carefully,” Marco answers.

The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not.

Celia, wait,” Marco says, standing but not moving closer to her. “You are breaking my heart. You told me once that I reminded you of your father. That you never wanted to suffer the way your mother did for him, but you are doing exactly that to me. You keep leaving me. You leave me longing for you again and again when I would give anything for you to stay, and it is killing me.” “It has to kill one of us,” Celia says quietly.

So it’s really best to keep your secrets when you have them, for their own good, as well as yours.

I think that's a hallmark of a really good story that it has readers that it speaks to more than others.