I would take today's joy, and tomorrow's. I would take it with both hands, anywhere it came.

A pretty woman is a Christmas tree,' my mother told me in the airport. This fella is hanging things on my branches as his gaze sweeps from my face all the way down my body to my hips and then back to my face. Ideas fly from his widened eyes and land on me like teeny, decorative burdens. He is giving me shyness, maybe, some book smarts, and a certain yielding sweetness in bed. The oil-slick eyes get me, and I find myself hanging a few ornaments myself, giving him deft hands and a sense of humor.

There are gods in Alabama: Jack Daniel's, high school quarterbacks, trucks, big tits, and also Jesus.

I would take today's joy, and tomorrow's. I would take it with both hands, anywhere it came.

God gave us crying so other folks could see when we needed help, and help us.

THE STORIES WE TELL fearlessly explores the textures of the human heart, finding a path toward hope through a Savannah that is jagged with class issues, faith misused, and broken trust. Henry loses you in a landscape peopled with secret keepers, storytellers and liars, and proves that in the end, love is the only reliable compass. This is everything you expect from Patti Callahan Henry—lyrical writing, characters worth rooting for, a sure-footed belief in the power of goodness—plus a twisty plot that will keep the pages turning long into the night.

William knows that science and magic are the same thing; magic is only science that hasn't been explained yet. Tonight he has made chemistry into magic for her.