“Joanna has an unmanageable lump in her throat and wonders why it's always the happy memories that make her cry.”

“But they were her parents! Putting up with all of her crap was their official job - they couldn't wriggle out of it! She tried to swallow the lump forming in her throat. How could they do this to her?”

“...her cry is a hook and it catches me in the throat.”

“In a great gasp, puts her head in her hands again and cries as if her throat were a cave, as if the howling winds came from her belly, she cries like a storm that will never end.”

“What do you want, Christian?”What did I want? To make her smile, to wipe away her tears, to hold her. To be a father, a real father, not one in title, but on who’d earned that right. I wanted to stay. “I want my family,” I forced through the lump in my throat.”

“He gives her a lump of grief that has hardened at the bottom of the canvas pocket at his waist. He gives her a hard lump of grief to use as bait. It rings like a coin in the river.”