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

“he could feel his hope wilting.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“It was wrong and impossible and illicit and yet each minute with the boy was a gift, a scene from a story he could not leave.”

“Maybe the idea was that he could write so many letters, deliver so many envelopes back to Sandy, eventually he'd have sent all of himself, and could exist more there than he did here.”