“Sweet little thing says she still wants to marry him. Breaks your heart: She sighed and sounded sincere, so Tracy nodded in a way she hoped denoted that she, too, was a little bit heartbroken — even though she thought that if her (hypothetical) boyfriend were in a coma for more than a few weeks, she’d probably just cut her losses and move on, not stick around to watch him shit in his pants for the next fifty years.”

“The coma ward was boring yet difficult. Like golf.”

“He stared at Avery's socks and felt an odd sense of wonder. Socks were so normal. So mundane. How could someone who pulled on socks in the morning be a serial killer? Socks were not hard or dangerous. Socks were funny; foot mittens, that's what socks were. They made a knobbly hinge of your toes and became comical sock-puppets. Surely anyone who wore socks could not truly be a threat to him or anyone else?”

“She shoved her can right under his chin. "Don't mess with seniors," she growled at him.”

“He smiled down into her eyes and she looked right at him and she knew him. When hadn’t she known him? With a little sigh of acceptance, she moved into his arms, meeting his eager kiss with a mouth that was just as greedy as him”

“Almost Homeby Sugar Mae ColeHome isn’t always a place you picture in your mindWith furniture and cookies and music playing and people laughing.Home is something you can carry around like a dreamAnd let it grow in your heart until you’re ready for it.Losing things helps you appreciate when you find them againAnd finding things gives you hope that when you lose thingsIt might not be forever.Once, long ago, a girl lost her home, but she didn’t lose her dream.She hung on to it as the wind kept trying to blow it away,But that just made it stronger.So now she has keys and walls of many colorsAnd people around her who think she’s something.”

“It was a lie, of course, and she was prepared to confess it to her priest. But she’d be damned if she’d tell him she’d been playing with his music.Her pride was worth the penance.He felt a quiver in his heart that he took for sympathy. “There, Brenna darling. Have you gone and fallen in love on me?”She jerked, whirled, gaped at him. He was watching her with such—such bloody affection, such patience and sympathy. She could have beaten him black and blue. Instead, she just shoved clear of him and snatched up her toolbox. “Shawn Gallagher, you are truly a great idiot of a man.”With her nose in the air and her tools clanking, she stalked out.He only shook his head, then went back to his cleaning up. With that little quiver around his heart again, he wondered who it was that O’Toole had set her sights on.Whoever, Shawn thought, slamming a cupboard door just a little too forcefully, the man had better be worthy of her.”