“How could you pick, knowing that you'd have to go home and live with the choice you made?”

“You might have to lose control before you could find out what you'd been missing.”

“How do you walk into someone's life again after twenty-eight years? How do you pick up, when you were too young to know where you left off.”

“How do you tell someone that you weren't the person he thought you were? And more importantly, how did you tell him that you'd meant the things you'd said, when everything else about you turned out to be a lie.”

“You stared at the stranger in front of you and decided,categorically, that this was no longer your son. Or you made the decision to find whatever scraps ofyour child you still could in what he had become.Was that even really a choice, if you were a mother?”

“I don't know what he means by that, but I nod and smile at him. You'd be surprised at how far that response can get you in a conversation where you are completely confused.”

“She thought of death like the seam of a hem: each time you lose someone close, it unraveled a little. You could still go along with your life, but you'd be forever tripping over something you previously took for granted.”