People forgot; it was in the nature of people to forget, to blur boundaries, to retell stories to come out the way they wanted them to come out, to remember things as how they ought to be instead of how they were.

Betrayal would be a different sort of sick.

My sheets had never been so clean as they had in the past few months. I hardly got them on again before something else happened and I was feverishly ripping them off and stuffing them in the wash with double amounts of soap and all the "extra" buttons pushed: extra wash, extra rinse, extra water, extra spin, extra protection against things that go bump in the night.

Laughter went on and on, like sunlight and stone, even if the human beings who laughed did not.

I found that the only way I could control this sorrow was not to think of [it] at all, which was almost as painful as the loss itself.

I smiled. "I understand now. But It doesn't matter and you needn't apologize. They have been very kind to me too. Even if we did differ a little about suitable dresses." He considered me a moment, a mischievous light creeping into his eyes, and said: "Was THAT the dress - that night you wouldn't come out of your room?" I grinned and nodded, and we both laughed.

But it was equally clear to her that this was her fate, that she had called its name and it had come to her, and she could do nothing now but own it.