It isn’t about being at the same school or the same town or even the same room. It’s about being together. Love is a choice you make.

I prefer to scare myself in the ordinary ways, Daddy. Like letting my children cross the country for college. Why bungee jump when you can put a kindergartener on a school bus? Now, that's real terror.

Stacey: "I'm surprised you haven't thrown me out." Comfort: "At your current weight, I'd need some sort of catapult.

They would always be a family, but if she'd learned anything in the past few weeks it was that a family wasn't a static thing. There were always changes going on. Like with continents, sometimes the changes were invisible and underground, and sometimes they were explosive and deadly. The trick was to keep your balance. You couldn't control the direction of your family any more than you could stop the continental shelf from breaking apart. All you could do was hold on for the ride.

It's not intentions that matter. It's actions. We are what we do and say, not what we intend to.

I always thought it was what I wanted: to be loved and admired. Now I think perhaps I'd like to be known.

Before this trip and all that she'd learned about the three of them, she would have gotten angry or changed the subject. Anything to obscure the pain she felt. Now she knew better. You carried your pain with you in life. There was no outrunning it.