“She inhaled deep breaths filled with salty air and watched the moon cast streaks across the rippling river, unable to determine in which direction it flowed or where it went, but suddenly curious about it for the first time.”

“She stood before him on the porch now, as living, breathing proof that fortune had not tipped itself in his direction all those years ago.”

“She let go and yet for the first time did not feel she was giving up.”

“Fear swallowed her, deep and dark as the ocean and she sank into it.”

“She did not know why the heat felt so heavy in that house, why all of a sudden it felt so much less like warmth than she remembered.”

“This was the place where someone had led her, only she could not remember who and could not remember when. Just that this was where she was now.”

“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.”