“He thought he might say more, but something in her face had closed off, and the opportunity passed.”

“A torrent of language, a spring off the near-infinite stream of confessions he had harbored half his life, all of hers.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“He could see tiny particles of dust drifting in the air between her ankles, each fleck tumbling individually in and out of the sunlight, and there was something intensely familiar in their arrangement.”