without music he felt aimless and adrift.

Sometimes you have to be apart from people you love, but that doesn't make you love them any less. Sometimes you love them more.

She wasn't, nor ever had been, under the illusion that marriage was a relationship characterized by endless bliss and romance. Throw any two people together, add the inevitable ups and downs, give the mixture a vigorous stir, and a few stormy arguments were inevitable, no matter how the couple loved each other.

Life, he realize, was much like a song. In the beginning there is mystery, in the end there is confirmation, but it's in the middle where all the emotion resides to make the whole thing worthwhile.

Hardships drive some people apart. Others, like us, grow even closer.

Allie would love what you've done," he remarked. "She was always a softie when it came to things like this." I folded my hands in my lap. "I wish she could be there this weekend." Noah glanced at the stack of letters. I knew he was imagining Allie, and for a brief moment, he looked strangely younger. "So do I," he said.

God, he suddenly understood, was love in its purest form, and in these last months with his children, he had felt His touch as surely as he had heard the music spilling from Ronnie's hands.