Away from the bright motion of the party, she carried her sadness like a dark stone clenched in her palm.

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.

Your understanding of a place changes the longer you stay; you discover more, and your own life gets woven into the fabric of the community.

Then she had been a fiancee, a young wife, and a mother, and she had discovered that these words were far too small ever to contain the experience.

The thing is, I used to like that: feeling special because I knew something no one else did. It's a kind of power, isn't it, knowing a secret? But lately I don't like it so much, knowing this. It's not really mine to know, is it?

Grief, it seemed, was a physical place.

Though Lexington is not a small town, it sometimes feels like one, with circles of acquaintance overlapping once, then again; the person you meet by chance at the library or the pool may turn out to be the best friend of your down-the-street neighbor. Maybe thats why people are so friendly here, so willing to be unhurried.