How do you tell someone that you weren't the person he thought you were? And more importantly, how did you tell him that you'd meant the things you'd said, when everything else about you turned out to be a lie.

I think my writing has become "cleaner."

Sometimes there aren't words. The silence between us is flung wide as an ocean. But I manage to reach across it, to wrap my arms around him.

I sometimes wonder if it is just me, or if there are other women who figure out where they are supposed to be by going nowhere.

I drew it over my skin like a violins bow, No one would ever hear the song of my shame.

and another claimed it was inherited through a parent who was a carrier of the defective gene. I had always assumed the latter was the case with Claire. After all, surely a child who grew out of grief would be born with a heavy heart.

Sometimes Chris wished he could sneak a peek at the back of the book, so to speak, and see how it was all going to turn out, so that he wouldn't have to bother going through the motions.