It isn’t a perfect place. There are no perfect places. But nobody cares about perfection when there are sand castles to build and kites to chase, children that are being born, old hearts that are giving in.

Someday I'll tell you all of it," I say. "I'd like that," he says. "No," I say. "I promise you won't.

Fall has always been my favorite season. The time when everything bursts with its last beauty, as if nature had been saving up all year for the grand finale.

I want to make a world more magical than my own. I don't care if it makes sense, I don't care if it's ridiculed or if, rather than a neat round planet that goes around forever, it ends with a cliff that falls off into nothing. I want to have my eyes wide open, and I want to see this room and at the same time, not this room.

When we were first married, I thought he must have been the most heartless, hateful man I'd ever known, but he was just as much a prisonor as I was. Where Vaughn imprisoned me with walls, he imprisoned his son with ignorance.

I nod like I'm not at all unnerved by this new cold side to him. Not cruel like his father. Not warm like the husband who sought me out on quiet nights. Something in between. This Linden has never woven his fingers through mine, never chosen me from a line of weary Gathered girls, never said he loved me in a myriad of coloured lights. We are nothing to each other.

Linden just wants to protect her, is what I want to say. She's all he has. I left him. I'm at arms reach, but I've left him.