He reached for her and kissed her. It was all at once passionate, as if there was too much in him to contain. He was immediately swept up in it. It took no effort, the difference between swimming on your own and being washed away in a flood.

He'd always been fascinated by her, drawn to her the way curious people are always drawn to things they don't understand.

Whenever I would get too nosy as a child, my grandmother would say, "When you learn someone else's secret, your own secrets aren't safe. Dig up one, release them all.

Everything had felt so precarious since her mother's death, like she was walking on a bridge made of paper.

Fate never promises to tell you everything up front. You aren't always shown the path in life you're supposed to take. But if there was one thing she'd learned in the past few weeks, it was that sometimes, when you're really lucky, you meet someone with a map.

She looked like autumn, when leaves turned and fruit ripened.

Superstitions are man's way of trying to control things he has no control over.