...a sad sort of vulnerability was wafting from her, making the night smell like maple syrup.

Don't you wish you could take a single childhood memory and blow it up into a bubble and live inside it forever?

Watching them, she realized they made so much sense together. Every look, every touch, was a reassurance, almost electric, as if they were shocking each other with every contact.

There was a mood of magic and frenzy to the room. Crystalline swirls of sugar and flour still lingered in the air like kite tails. And then there was the smell-the smell of hope, the kind of smell that brought people home.

Being left makes you doubt your ability to keep people, even friends.

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.

It looked like the world was covered in a cobbler crust of brown sugar and cinnamon.