“That was not her husband; she knew him, and that was not him. But of course she didn’t really know him.”

“He wasn’t looking at her, was at such an oblique angle to her that his face was little more than a sliver, but she knew him at once. “It was like reading,” she would try to explain later, and she wasn’t talking about phonics. She didn’t break him into syllables—shoulders, hair, shirt collar, hand, nose, cheekbone—and put him back together again; she didn’t sound him out. He was a language she knew, and it was whole-word recognition: Will.”

“She suspects her husband, Jake, might be gay." "Did you suggest she ask him?"Mom laughed. "Of course not. Business is slow.”

“She must have sensed she never really had him. That was a sadness of hers, he knew.”

“Now that she decided she knew exactly what she wanted –him- she couldn’t wait to break the news. And if he didn’t want her, she could live with that – what she wouldn’t be able to live with was if she never told him.”

“sex was where laurel knew she knew him, and talking was the way she called him to her.”