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

“He was failing at everything important. A room away his daughter was sitting with her face in her hands and he could not go to her.”

“he could feel his hope wilting.”

“Toward midnight he sat in the Raney Playground swings with his broken, disloyal heart continuing to pump behind his ribs. Maybe fifty feet away his daughter was in her bed, reeling, thinking it out, a thousand betrayals and loves and resentments riding the synapses between brain and heart and back again.”

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

“the air would get so heavy with moisture he imagined he could feel each bloated molecule as it toppled into his lungs.”

“His heart was a catapult in his chest.”