In some deep place in her heart, Caroline had kept alive the silly romantic notion that somehow David Henry had once known her as no one else ever could. But it was not true. He had never even glimpsed her.

She didn't love him and he didn't love her; she was like an addiction, and what they were doing had a darkness to it, a weight.

In some deep place in her heart, Caroline had kept alive the silly romantic notion that somehow David Henry had once known her as no one else ever could. But it was not true. He had never even glimpsed her.

Her voice, high and clear, moved through the leaves, through the sunlight. It splashed onto the gravel, the grass. He imagined the notes falling into the air like stones into water, rippling the invisible surface of the world. Waves of sound, waves of light: his father had tried to pin everything down, but the world was fluid and could not be contained.

After all these years, I feel so free. Who knows where I might fly?

Grief, it seemed, was a physical place.

Its impossible to control the reception of your work - the only thing you can control is the experience of writing itself, and the work you create.