Despite my dad's assurances I was strangely nervous my stomach tight ever since we'd hung up. Maybe Deb had picked up on this and it was why she'd pretty much talked nonstop since I'd approached her and asked for a ride. I'd barely had time to explain the situation before she had launched into a dozen stories to illustrate the point that Things Happened But People Were Okay in the End.

You need demarcation." "Demarcation?" I asked. "It means a clear separation between two things," he told me. "A solid end before a clean beginning. No murky borders. Clarity.

It was great. Freedom even the imagined kind always is.

Once, she'd been a pro at decompressing, loved to sit on the back deck of the beach house in one of our splintery Adirondack chairs for hours at a time, staring at the ocean. She never had a book or the paper or anything else to distract her. Just the horizon, but it kept her attention, her gaze unwavering. Maybe it was the absence of thought that she loved about being out there, the world narrowing to just the pounding of the waves as the water moved in and out.

So many times it seemed like there were chances to stop things before they started. Or even stop them in midstream. But it was even worse when you knew in that very moment that there was still time to save yourself, and yet you couldn't even budge.

When someone starts to change, and it’s obvious, it's sort of natural to wonder why. Right?

The first boy was always the hardest.