“Her grandmother experienced them differently, as if they brought her remnants from another time, another life even, which she refused to acknowledge in any other context.”

“She looked over at her grandmother, smiling in her sleep from what she hoped was a dream about George Bailey and the angel that would eventually save him.”

“Parker fixated on the envelope's precise penmanship as she lifted it. Her grandmother rarely took the time to write her own name in the return address, let alone give it the aesthetic attention that this one so seemed to demand. Once, when Parker questioned her on this, her grandmother casually asserted that she "didn't quite believe in envelopes" as if this were a debatable concept like Socialism or wearing white after Labor Day.”

“Eventually, as her grandmother’s sobs softened, she pulled her away and – looking deeply into the clouds of her grey eyes – lifted her and led her home for the last time.”

“The likeness she had been searching for was on her face the whole time.”

“What a world, she thought, where you could at one moment be under a cloud and the next, right in the heart of it; and then, in another moment, soaring high above them all.”

“She approached the car with a confident stride that implied she had lived on the block her whole life.”