I am not a storyteller . . . not like the others. I only have one tale to tell.

It is a cruel, ironical art, photography. The dragging of captured moments into the future; moments that should have been allowed to be evaporate into the past; should exist only in memories, glimpsed through the fog of events that came after. Photographs force us to see people before their future weighed them down.

Cassandra wondered at the mind's cruel ability to toss up flecks of the past. Why, as she neared her life's end, her grandmother's head should ring with the voices of people long since gone. Was it always this way? Did those with passage booked on death's silent ship always scan the dock for faces of the long-departed?

...She's understood the power of stories. Their magical ability to refill the wounded part of people.

So much in life came down to timing.

Nighttime is different. Things are otherwise when the world is black. Insecurities and hurts, anxieties and fears grow teeth at night. p493

After all, it's the librarian's sworn purpose to bring books together with their one true reader.