My first job was in a nursing home - a terrible place in retrospect. It was in an old house, and the residents were so lonely. People rarely visited them. I only stayed there a couple of months, but it made a strong impression on me.

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.

This is what he knew that Paul didn't: the world was precarious and sometimes cruel. He'd had to fight hard to achieve what Paul simply took for granted.

You missed a lot of heartache, sure. But David, you missed a lot of joy.

The place was a familiar as breath but as far from his life now as the moon.

I love to swim, and I love being near water.

That there were other worlds, invisible, unknown, beyond imagination even, was a revelation to him.