“Behind her leg a shy little girl - Grace - smiling up. "Dad?" It was a kind hope. But his dreams spoke to none of that: when he slept he dreamt of darkness, or of people he did not recognize, or of water closing slowly, almost gratefully, over his head.”

“Her smile was genuine-looking and later he would mull her question over and over in his head until it mushroomed into something larger.”

“Did dreams, he wondered, when they arrived, make a sound? The smallest kind, like the noise of an embryo being conceived, or a snowflake touching down?”

“he could feel his hope wilting.”

“His thoughts skirted Sandy and especially Grace as if they were fatal chasms into which he might tumble.”

“To a certain extent, time was malleable, what he did did matter. Grace was proof of that. Naaliyah was alive.”

“He could not look at his daughter without feeling his heart turn over.”