“She's four minutes late, which doesn't seem like all that much when you think about it's a commercial break, the period within classes, the time it takes to cook a microwave meal. Four minutes is nothing.”

“Did you know that people who meet at least three different times within twenty-four hour period are ninety-eight percent more likely to meet again?”

“When you're on the other side of it," she says, "fifty-two years can seem like about fifty-two minutes.”

“Who would have guessed that four minutes could change everything?”

“She understands now what she, in all her worry, had forgotten. That even as she hesitates and wavers, even as she thinks too much and moves too cautiously, she doesn't always have to get it right. It's okay to look back, even as you move forward.”

“It wasn't that we forgot. But things like that sometimes get stored away, and there never seems to be a good time to dig them up again. It hurts a lot less to keep them buried. That doesn't make it right, but it's just the way it is.”

“The clouds are thick as cotton and laced in silver from the sun, and she thinks back to what Oliver said on the plane, the word taking shape in her mind: cumulus. The one cloud that seemed both imaginary and true at the same time.”