“She smiled, not because she felt confident that she could think of a solution, but for the gratitude that she wasn’t quite so alone in her pursuit.”

“She didn’t quite know how to translate faces; so she wondered about Jerry, but that’s all she could do.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”