“But not unusual, for good girls sometimes come to bad ends.”

“To love you is her nature. But hers is a love from which no good may come. And your desire for her will lead only to cold, dark places.”

“He stood looking out past the certainty of the empty porch, but he couldn’t imagine his father standing anywhere else. It was like listening for the phone to ring, wanting it to ring so badly you convince yourself that you can feel the person on the other end of the line, feel them dialing your number, but then you wait and wait, and it never rings.”

“To get ahead, sometimes you had to retrace your steps.”

“Stories wander around, go from one land to another, sometimes parts change.”

“He could feel her doing that list thing, where she didn’t speak or look at you because she was tallying something in her head. Figuring out how bad you’d messed up.”

“He just couldn’t be with people. There were a few kids he sometimes spoke with at school—at lunch, or walking home—but months ago even they had stopped trying to talk to him. Silas had no real answers for their predictable questions.”