“We stood there for a moment, stunned. The crosswalk light turned green, and Georgia hooked her arm through mine as we stepped out into the street."Weird night," she said finally, breaking our silence."Understatement of the year," I replied. "Should we tell Mamie and Papy about it?""What?" Georgia laughed. "And spoil Papy's 'Paris is safe' delusion? They'd never let us out of the house again.”

“The next day Georgia left for school before I even got to the breakfast table. From behind his newspaper, Papy asked tiredly, "Are you girls on World War Four now, or is it Five?”

“When the light at Vernon turned green, we stepped into the street and George grabbed my hand and the ghosts of our younger selves crossed with us.”

“Perhaps it is our fear, that in the silence between stories, in the moment of falling, the fear that we will never find the one story which will save us, and so we lunge for another, and we feel safe again, if only for as long as we are telling it.”

“At night we turned all the lights in every room of our house on. We turned the lights on the front porch on. We turned the lights on the back porch and over the garage on too. We wanted to keep the darkness that surrounded our house and us as far away from us as we could.”

“How much English do you know? None, Papi said after a moment. Eulalio shook his head. Papi met Eulalio last and liked him least.”