Who knows what part we play in other people's dreams?

My father taught me to love detective fiction writers such as Raymond Chandler. When I decided to have a hard-boiled detective series I did a lot of studying before I wrote the first book. I learned police procedure, the California criminal law, and many areas outside my expertise.

Give yourself time to get better.

So much of the past in encapsulated in the odds and ends. Most of us discard more information about ourselves than we ever care to preserve. Our recollection of the past is not simply distorted by our faulty perception of events remembered but skewed by those forgotten. The memory is like twin orbiting stars, one visible, one dark, the trajectory of what's evident forever affected by the gravity of what's concealed.

Grief rolled across the space between us like a wash of salt water.

That's the way the system works. Sometimes you get the bear, sometimes the bear gets you.

What could smell better than supper being cooked by someone else?