“I wanted only a familiar voice, someone who knew me. Not some earlier, larval version of myself. . .”

“It was a lesson most people learned much earlier; that even friendship could have an undisclosed shelf life. That loyalty and affection, so consuming and powerful, could dissipate like fog.”

“His words stayed with her for years. Each night as she lay waiting for sleep, she tried to re-create the evening in her mind — the tone of his voice, his hand on her shoulder. Soon the memory was worn as an old photograph, the edges fuzzy from frequent handling; she worried that she’d gotten the words wrong, forgotten some nuance of his face or voice. Finally she wondered if she’d made the whole thing up.”

“It was the oldest friends who mattered most. With each passing year, Paulette realized this more deeply. She thought of her borther Roy, retired to Arizona, to golf with other men who were also - she loathed the expression - senior citizens. Roy had arrived in Phoenix with an entire life behind him, a career, a marriage; to his new friends he'd always be old.”

“When they touched it was like touching her own body. From childhood they had been the same height; their arms and legs and hands were still perfectly congruent. Only the centers of them were different, aching, fascinated, every part of them heated to the same temperature as the sun warmed pond.”

“I open my heart to her and lay it on the table.”

“Destiny, she’d learned, was written in the heavens; a person couldn’t take what the universe didn’t wish to give.”