I put my forehead on his collarbone, place one hand on his chest. Its rhythm reassures me: He is real, and he is now.

All this time, I thought we were growing apart because I was leaving Lena behind. But really it was the reverse. She was learning to lie. She was learning to love.

That was what her parents did not understand—and had never understood—about stories. Liza told herself storied as though she was weaving and knotting an endless rope. Then, no matter how dark or terrible the pit she found herself in, she could pull herself out, inch by inch and hand over hand, on the long rope of stories.

Hope keeps you alive.

Grief is like sinking, like being buried.

This was what being cured was like: like being in a fishbowl, circling always inside the same glass.

Now I'd rather be infected with love for the tiniest sliver of a second than live a hundred years smothered by a lie.