It was a strange thing, to still be in love with your wife and to not know if you liked her. What would happen when this was all over? Could you forgive someone if she hurt you and the people you love, if she truly believed she was only trying to help? I had filed for divorce, but that wasn't what I really wanted. What I really wanted was for all of us to go back two years, and start over. Had I ever really told her that?

Do you remember the summer we signed you up for camp? And the night before you left, you said you've changed your mind and wanted to stay home? I told you to to get a seat on the left side of the bus, so when you pulled away, you'd be able to look back and see me there waiting for you." I press her hand against my cheek, hard enough to leave a mark. "You get that same seat in Heaven. One where you can watch me, watching you.

Do you know how there are moments when the world moves so slowly you can feel your bones shifting, your mind tumbling? When you think that no matter what happens to you for the rest of your life, you will remember every last detail of that one minute forever?

[Jules] slides into a seat beside me with her hot lunch tray, sighing. “Four hours, thirty-six minutes, and twelve seconds till we’re out of purgatory for the weekend.” “Maybe later,” I murmur, still distracted by the day’s previous events. “So, let me show you how a conversation works. I say something, and then you say something back that actually relates to what I was talking about, as if you were even the least bit interested.” “Huh?” I say.

Was there a language of loss? Did everyone who suffered speak a different dialect?

I adore the way he looks at me sometimes, as if love is a quantity he cannot measure scientifically, because it multiplies too quickly.

If you spent your life concentrating on what everyone else thought of you, would you forget who you really were? What if the face you showed the world turned out to be a mask... with nothing beneath it?