The house, the pond, the tree-it was all both overwhelmingly familiar and different from what she remembered-smaller and shabbier, somehow. It was like waking up to find that your reflection in the mirror had aged overnight, or had sprouted a new mole: You were forced to admit that things changed, whether you gave them permission to or not.

It was all very strange, Mr. Gray thought, as he wiped the coffee canister clean with a sponge. Very, very mysterious. You were born; you lived a whole life; and at the end, you wound up in a coffee canister. "Ah, well," he said out loud quietly. "That's just the way things are. Life's a funny business." Death, he supposed, was the punch line.

There is no before. There is only now, and what comes next.

i think of all the thousands of billions of steps and missteps and chances and coincidences that have brought me here. Brought you here, and it feels like the biggest miracle in the world.

I am now officially married to Fred Hargrove. Nothing will ever be the same.

Fear. Blame. Don't forget. Mom. I love you. -Lauren Oliver, Delerium

And for a moment―for a split second―everything else falls away, the whole pattern and order of my life, and a huge joy crests in my chest. I am no one, and I owe nothing to anybody, and my life is my own.