“March, rain at the windows, and he had to be up at five the next morning. He listened to the click and patter of drops against the panes.”

“Between them was fifteen or so feet of frozen space, bounded by his window and hers, but it was as if the windows had liquefied, or else the air had, and his vision skewed and rippled and it was all he could do to put the Newport into gear and ease forward to let the next car in.”

“Memory gallops, then checks up and veers unexpectedly; to memory, the order of occurrence is arbitrary. Winkler was still on an airplane, hurtling north, but he was also pushing farther back, sinking deeper into the overlaps, to the years before he even had a daughter, before he had even dreamed of the woman who would become his wife.”

“Who had he been? A failed father, a runaway husband. A son. A packet of unopened letters. He was dead; he was dead.”

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

“The dread that had been rising all morning rose higher in his throat as if by capillary action.”

“And this feeling, permeating every waking minute, that he had made too many wrong decisions.”