She stares at me for a moment, and then she bursts out laughing. “You haven’t seen his perfect little wife and his perfect little girls. Believe me, Oliver, I’m not the great love of his life, the one he’ll never forget.” “You are to me,” I say.

Life was what happened when all the what-if’s didn’t, when what you dreamed or hoped or – in this case – feared might come to pass passed by instead.

I learned a lot that night. For example, that part of being the magician's assistant means coming face-to-face with illusion. That invisibility is really just knotting your body in a certain way and letting the black curtain fall over you. That people don't vanish into thin air; that when you can't find someone, it's because you've been misdirected to look elsewhere.

But once you throw a stone, there are ripples in the pond, even if you remove the rock.

But as he grew older, he learned that a word was a powerful thing. An insult didn't have to be shouted to bleed; a vow didn't have to be whispered to make you believe. Hold a thought in your head, and that was enough to change the actions of anyone and anything that crossed your path.

Sometimes you can see things happen right in front of your eyes and still jump to the wrong conclusions.

You figured that the only way I'd be happy is if I did the things you thought would be best for me.