Trevanion wrapped his arm around his son's neck like shepherd's hook and dragged him along playfully. when he let go, Finnikin thought he would have liked his father to hold on a moment longer.

Jonah Griggs. Not just a name but a state of mind I never want to revisit, although I do keep him at the back of my mind for those times I get me hopes raised about something. So then I can slap myself into reality and remind myself of what happens when you let someone into your sacred space. Jonah Griggs is my second reminder to never ever trust another human being. My mother was first.

Come here,” she says. “No, you come here.” “I said it first.” “Rock paper scissors.” “No. Because you’ll do nerdy calculations and work out what I chose the last six times and then you’ll win.” Will pushes away from the table and his hand snakes out and he pulls her toward him and Tom figures that Will was always going to go to her first.

They always prided themselves on looking youthful. “Forty’s the new thirty,” they’d joke. Until heartbreak and grief enter your life, and then forty’s the new one hundred.

Comfort zones are overrated. They make you lazy.

My father took one hundred and thirty-two minutes to die.

Somehow, even in the worst of times, the tiniest fragments of good survive. It was the grip in which one held those fragments that counted.