“Eleanor went to her room "where she was free to think and be wretched.”

“Every night I went into Hannah's room and sat with her stuff. The thing I couldn't get was how her clothes and her books and her drawings were still there, but she wasn't. It just didn't compute. Her room was a like a car without an engine, everything where it should be, except all it was was potential. None of it was going to get used again.”

“I disappeared in her and she, wondering where I went, left.”

“Finally,” Lilith said, smiling warmly at her. “A reasonable angel.”“I’m no angel,” Eleanore quietly insisted.“Yes, you are,” said every man in the room.”

“Her only gift was knowing people almost by instinct, she thought, walking on. If you put her in a room with someone, up went her back like a cat's; or she purred.”

“Someone must be having a big party, Shyla thought as she turned into her neighborhood, the rhythmic salsa beat of Latin music was so loud.A car she didn't recognize was parked in the middle of her driveway. She had to drive over the grass in order to get around it. She pushed the automatic opener to raise the garage door. Another car was parked where she normally parked, and it wasn't Carl's. It belonged to Pilar. Leaving her car where it was, she got out and went into the house through the back door from the garage.Inside the house, the noise was almost deafening. Two young children were thrashing one another in the middle of the family room while some woman, presumably their mother, yelled at them in Spanish. The woman barely noticed Shyla.Shyla went into the living room and could hear other voices and laughter coming from her bedroom. There, she found a young woman going through her jewelry box, and someone else holding up one of her bras. When they saw Shyla, they stopped laughing.Pilar and another elderly woman were just coming down the stairs when Shyla went back into the living room."Shyla, why are you home?" Pilar asked, then shrugged.Shyla could hardly hear her over the noise. "I live here," she said, too stunned to say anything else. She went back into the family room and turned off the compact disc player. There, on the floor, lay her great grandmother's china clock, broken.”