Could others hold him?" His face remains the same. "There are no others. You're the only one." I swallow. "I can hold him.

My father said once that if I didn't have my mother's ginger hair, I wouldn't blush or curse as easily. Which I though was unfair. I hardly ever curse or blush, even though I've had plenty of days that required both.

And there is the girl. When I first see her and her dun mare from my vantage point on the cliff road, I am struck first not by the fact that she is a girl, but by the fact that she's in the ocean. it's the dreaded second day, the day people start to die, and no one will get close to the surf. But there she is, trotting up to the knee in the water. Fearless.

Sean, as always, gets by on one word while everyone else needs five or six.

we're watchers of this world aren't we? not players

This is a love story. I never knew there were so many kinds of love or that love could make people do so many different things. I never knew there were so many different ways to say goodbye.

I'm a dirt road out in the country kind of person, but I remember thinking, I could live in Chicago.