It's a weird smile, but it reaches his eyes and I bottle it. And I put it in my ammo pack that's kept right next to my soul and Justine's spirit and Siobhan's hope and Tara's passions. Because if I'm going to wake up one morning and not be able to get out of bed, I'm going to need everything I've got to fight this disease that could be sleeping inside of me.

I still wake with your name on my lips every morning.

In the games of queens and kings, we leave our dreams at the door and we make do with what we have. Sometimes if we’re fortunate, we still manage to have a good life.

I don't want to let go, because tonight I'm not looking for anything more than being part of him. Because being part of him isn't just anything. It's kind of everything.

If I want more, I need to go and get it, demand it, take hold of it with all my might, and do the best I can with it.

Later, when they were almost asleep he had called out to her. 'Finke?' 'Yeah?' 'We'll make a great team. You plant. I build.

My father took one hundred and thirty-two minutes to die. I counted. It happened on the Jellicoe Road. The prettiest road I’d ever seen, where trees made breezy canopies like a tunnel to Shangri-La. We were going to the ocean, hundreds of miles away, because I wanted to see the ocean and my father said that it was about time the four of us made that journey. I remember asking, 'What’s the difference between a trip and a journey?' and my father said, 'Narnie, my love, when we get there, you’ll understand,' and that was the last thing he ever said.