History could hover, like a faint perfume or a memory stamped on the back of one's eyelids.

I have never fit into this town, this marriage, this skin. I am the child who was picked last to play tag; I am the girl who laughed although she did not get the joke; I am the piecemeal part of you that you pretend doesn't exist, except it is all I am, all the time.

She was forced to consider the startling fact that the love of her life might not actually be someone with whom she could spend a lifetime.

Oh,that's right. You're a...what did you call it? Ah, a ghost hunter. You don't have to see things to believe them." Adam's gaze locked onto the persecutor's. "Maybe you've got that backward," he said. "Maybe it's just that I believe things you cant see.

Identification is not the same as knowing someone through and through.

Besides the obvious difference, there was not much distinction between losing a best friend and losing a lover: it was all about intimacy. One moment, you had someone to share your biggest triumphs and fatal flaws with; the next minute, you had to keep them bottled inside. One moment, you'd start to call her to tell her a snippet of news or to vent about your awful day before realizing you did not have that right anymore; the next, you could not remember the digits of her phone number.

Sometimes when you pick up your child you can feel the map of your own bones beneath your hands, or smell the scent of your skin in the nape of his neck. This is the most extraordinary thing about motherhood - finding a piece of yourself separate and apart that all the same you could not live without.