McIntyre hesitated, and for a moment the tall, gray-haired man looked almost boyish. "After all this time...don't you think you could call me William?" Amy and Dan exchanged glances. As fond as they were of him, they couldn't imagine calling their lawyer by his first name. He saw the hesitation on their faces. "Will?" Amy cleared her throat. Dan fiddled with the new GPS. "How about 'Mac'?" "Mac," Dan said, trying out the name. Mr. McIntyre looked wistful. "I always wanted to be a Mac.

Oh, terrific," Dan muttered. "Just what we need. Another code! Why can't people just say what they mean? Why can't they say THE MAP IS IN THE DESK?

I always wanted a father. Any kind. A strict one, a funny one, one who bought me pink dresses, one who wished I was a boy. One who traveled, one who never got up out of his Morris chair. Doctor, lawyer, Indian chief. I wanted shaving cream in the sink and whistling on the stairs. I wanted pants hung by their cuffs from a dresser drawer. I wanted change jingling in a pocket and the sound of ice cracking in a cocktail glass at five thirty. I wanted to hear my mother laugh behind a closed door.

I loved him like a fever. Then he left. He kicked through love like it was dust and he kept on walking.

When you lose your parents, the sadness doesn't go away. It just changes. It hits you sideways sometimes instead of head-on. Like now.

When a family breaks you don't hear the crack of the breaking. You don't hear a sound.

I understood the word 'swoon'. It felt that way, like 'sweep' and 'moon' and 'woo', all those words smashed together in one word that stood for that feeling, right then.