You could hear the wind in the leaves, and on that wind traveled the screams of the kids on the playground in the distance, little kids figuring out how to be alive, how to navigate a world that wasn't made for them by navigating a playground that was.

She waited for me to play out the string, to find the place where she had stopped and was waiting for me, to follow the breadcrumb tail until it dead-ended into her.

You realize that trying to keep your distance from me will not lessen my affection for you. All efforts to save me from you will fail.

Cold,” he said, pressing a finger to my pale wrist. “Not cold so much as underoxygenated,” I said. “I love it when you talk medical to me,” he said. He stood, and pulled me up with him, and did not let go of my hand until we reached the stairs.

He missed that, too, and it hadn't even happened.

We don't suffer from a shortage of metaphors . . . But you have to be careful which metaphor you choose, because it matters.

Margo always loved mysteries. And in everything that came afterward, I could never stop thinking that maybe she loved mysteries so much that she became one.