“His heart was a catapult in his chest.”

“his heart laced with regret.”

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

“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.”

“To be in love was to be dazed twenty times a morning: by the latticework of frost on his windshield; by a feather loosed from his pillow; by a soft, pink rim of light over the hills.”

“The future waited for him to keep his appointment.”

“he could feel his hope wilting.”