People come, people go – they’ll drift in and out of your life, almost like characters in a favorite book. When you finally close the cover, the characters have told their story and you start up again with another book, complete with new characters and adventures. Then you find yourself focusing on the new ones, not the ones from the past.

The emotions attached to them were like sand castles in the tide, slowly washing out to sea.

How's it hangin' Harry? I keep trying to die, but they won't let me. Well, you can't have everything.

I think... that when it comes to us, anything is possible.

Now as he watched Katie toying with a ring that wasn't there, he felt his old investigative instincts kick in. There'd been a husband, he thought; her husband was the missing element. Either she was still married or she wasn't, but he had an undeniable hunch that Katie was still afraid of him.

Outside the hospital, I squinted in the harsh morning sunlight. I could hear birds chirping in the tree, but even though I searched for them, they remained hidden from me.

But...as bad as it was, I learned something about myself. That I could go through something like that and survive. I mean, I know it could have been worse--a lot worse-- but for me, it was all I could have handled at the time. And I learned from it.