The first thing I did when I got inside was turn on the kitchen light. Then I moved to the table, putting my dad's iPod on the speaker dock, and a Bob Dylan song came on, the notes familiar. I went into the living room, hitting the switch there, then down the hallway to my room, where I did the same. It was amazing what a little noise and brightness could do to a house and a life, how much the smallest bit of each could change everything. After all these years of just passing through, I was beginning to finally feel at home.

I used to worry I was entirely uninteresting, but the truth is I think if my life was more exciting I'd never have any time to write.

Really, it had been stupid to expect anything anyway. A few late nights does not a habit, or a relationship, make.

As if it didnt matter what was on, but instead how hard i was listening.

I wondered if emotions were like menstrual cycles, if you get enough women together. Give it time, and everyone was crying.

People get mad Annabel. Its not the end of the world.

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.