“You are a ghost, Andi," she says. "Almost gone."I look at her. I want to say something but I can't get the words out.She squeezes my hands. "Come back to us," she says. And she's gone.”

“Ah,' she says. 'But I know where your heart was. I know where it still is. And so do you.'He's gone,' I say. I lock the canvas into a hoop and hand it back to her. 'Here.'Then you must find him,' she says. 'You'll never stop loving him, you know. He'll never really be gone. My Gabriel is still here.'Your Gabriel?'Yes, my Gabriel. My husband.'You mean Lawrence,' I say. Lawrence, her husband who disappeared in a storm over thirty years ago.I mean my Gabriel. Everyone has one.' Ada takes my hand it puts it over her chest. 'Eva, my heart is ancient. But it still beats for him. Only for him.'I look into Ada's glistening eyes. She is telling the truth.You must find him.'I know that she is right.(Anxious Hearts)”

“Baby Girl,” I say. “I need you to remember everything I told you. Do you remember what I told you?”She still crying steady, but the hiccups is gone. “To wipe my bottom good when I’m done?”“No, baby, the other. About what you are.”I look deep into her rich brown eyes and she look into mine. Law, she got old-soul eyes, like she done lived a thousand years. And I swear I see, down inside, the woman she gone grow up to be. A flash from the future. She is tall and straight. She is proud. She got a better haircut. And she is remembering the words I put in her head. Remembering as a full grown woman.And then she say it, just like I need her to. “You is kind,” she say, “you is smart. You is important.”

“She laughs and looks out the window and I think for a minute that she's going to start to cry. I'm standing by the door and I look over at the Elvis Costello poster, at his eyes, watching her, watching us, and I try to get her away from it, so I tell her to come over here, sit down, and she thinks I want to hug her or something and she comes over to me and puts her arms around my back and says something like 'I think we've all lost some sort of feeling.”

“You are a ghost. Almost gone. Come back to us.”

“All was over in a moment. I had fulfilled my destiny. I was a captive and a slave. I loved Dora Spenlow to distraction! She was more than human to me. She was a Fairy, a Sylph, I don't know what she was - anything that no one ever saw, and everything that everybody ever wanted. I was swallowed up in an abyss of love in an instant. There was no pausing on the brink; no looking down, or looking back; I was gone, headlong, before I had sense to say a word to her.”