“What’s this?” “An apology, of sorts.” I made a moue, but slipped the lid from the top . . . and then my breath left me. Inside the box sat a baseball, its well-worn white leather marked by the signatures of every Cubs player from the team. It was just like the one I’d had—just like the one I’d told him about the night we made love.”

“It was as if something snapped in two deep inside me. My parents-- the people I’d loved the most in the world, the ones I’d always told all my secrets to, the ones I’d wanted to hide with far away from the rest of the world. They had lied, and I couldn’t imagine why. It couldn’t possibly matter why.”

“I’d like to let another person reveal my personality, and I’d like this person to be my clone. My clone would see me from the inside, as well as the outside.”

“I blew through her like baby’s breath through a dandelion, and my soulleft its mark on hers. Forever. In one night, I’d bound her too me for as longas she lived, and I had no words to tell her.When I woke the next night, to see her there, above me, the relief radiatingfrom every line of her body, I thought it was more of a miracle than myfirst rising.”

“Some of the names I could not reason, like the box marked DARKNESS, or the one with DEATH OF THE FIRSTBORN written in pencil on its front. I noticed that there was a box on the top of one of these skyscrapers of boxes that was marked DUST”

“I was eleven when my father left, so neither of us really knew our fathers. I’d met mine of course, but then I only knew my dad as a child knows a parent, as a sort of crude outline filled in with one or two colors. I’d never seen my father scared or cry. I’d never heard him admit to any wrongdoing. I have no idea what he dreamed of. And once I’d seen a smile pinned to one cheek and darkness to the other when my mum had yelled at him. Now he was gone, and I was left with just an impression—one of male warmth, big arms, and loud laughter.”