Annie turned away, her eyes glittering. 'Here's what no one tells you,' she said. 'When you deliver a fetus, you get a death certificate, but not a birth certificate. And afterward, your milk comes in, and there's nothing you can do to stop it.' She looked up at me. 'You can't win. Either you have the baby and wear your pain on the outside, or you don't have the baby, and you keep that ache in you forever. I know I didn't do the wrong thing. But I don't feel like I did the right thing, either.

Frankly, I wonder who Frank was, and why he has an adverb all to himself.

Life sometimes gets so bogged down in the details, you forget you are living it. There is always another appointment to be met, another bill to pay, another symptom presenting, another uneventful day to be notched onto the wooden wall. We have synchronized our watches, studied our calendars, existed in minutes, and completely forgotten to step back and see what we've accomplished.

Listen,” she said. “I may not be what you want right now, but I’m all you’ve got.

If you didn't remember something happening, was it because it never had happened? Or because you wished it hadn't?

There were lies we told to save ourselves, and then there were lies we told to rescue others. What counted more, the mistruth, or the greater good?

I imagined what it would be like to hold a butterfly in your hands something bejeweled and treasured and to know that despite your devotion it was dying by degrees.