Are you an idiot, or an idiot?' Gargarin hissed. 'The first one. I really resent being called the second.

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.

Hold my hand because I might disappear.

He came third in the state for woodwork,” Francesca explains. “We actually had to be proud of him for a whole week. Tough times.

What do you want from me?" he asks. What I want from every person in my life, I want to tell him. More.

If something happened to me, whose face will be on the front page of the paper begging for me? Is a person worth more because they have someone to grieve for them?

What were you doing with her?" I ask quietly. "Apart from questioning her about your whereabouts, I was listening to the most intriguing story about my life moonlighting as a kidnapper.