It's an incredible thing, how you can feel so taken care of by someone and yet feel, also, like you would die or do anything just for the chance to protect him back.

I need to live my life in the light of their deaths. I need to live.

I shiver, thinking how easy it is to be totally wrong about people-to see one tiny part of them and confuse it for the whole, to see the cause and think it's the effect or vice versa

There are no happy endings, only breaks in the regular action.

I think of Grace and feel a sharp pain in my chest.

He's stuck with me and I'm stuck with him. We're stuck. That's what growing up is all about, I guess.

Of course. That's what people do in a disordered world, a world of freedom and choice: they leave when they want. They disappear, they come back, they leave again. And you are left to pick up the pieces on your own.