The world was full of beauty. She wanted to grab hold of it and take it down into her bones. Yet always it seemed beyond her grasp. Sometimes only by a little, like now. The thinnest membrane. Usually, though, by miles. She couldn’t expect to be that kind of happy all the time. She knew that. But sometimes you could. Sometimes you should be allowed a tiny bit of joy that should stay with you for more than five minutes. That wasn’t too much to ask. To have a moment like this, and be able to hold on to it. To cross that membrane, and feel alive.

The one reader I'm trying to please as I write is me, and I'm pretty difficult to please.

It's just so out of control. Life, I mean. The way it flies off in all these different directions without your permission.

My parents met in music school and my father was a music professor and conductor. Growing up, we always had classical and contemporary music playing. There was a lot of Mozart and the Beatles.

We'd need a miracle," he says. "A real one. Do you think those happen anymore?

The one thing that could never die or be buried was my loyalty to Cameron for everything he’d done for me and what we’d been through together, even if that loyalty was a ghost.

Because love, love is never finished. It circles and circles, the memories out of order and not always complete.