“It never failed to amaze Alex how, with the brush of a hand, thetrack of someone’s life might veer in a completely different direction.”

“It never failed to amaze me how the most ordinary day could be catapulted into the extraordinary in the blink of an eye.”

“Memory is like plaster: peel it back and you just might find a completely different picture.”

“But memory is like plaster: peel it back and you just might find a completely different picture.”

“CanI tell you something? Off the record?”Alex nodded.“Before I took this job, I used to work in Maine. And I had a case that wasn’t just a case, if youknow what I mean.”Alex did. She found herself listening in his voice for a note she hadn’t heard before-a low one thatresonated with anguish, like a tuning fork that never stopped its vibration. “There was a womanthere who meant everything to me, and she had a little boy who meant everything to her. And whenhe was hurt, in a way a kid never should be, I moved heaven and earth to work that case, because Ithought no one could possibly do a better job than I could. No one could possibly care more aboutthe outcome.” He looked directly at Alex. “I was so sure I could separate how I felt about what hadhappened from how I had to do my job.”Alex swallowed, dry as dust. “And did you?”“No. Because when you love someone, no matter what you tell yourself, it stops being a job.”“What does it become?”Patrick thought for a moment. “Revenge.”

“The scenery you see when you're driving in a car is completely different from the scenery you'd see if you walked the same stretch of road. In the car you might see splashes of color; by foot, you'd realize they are butterflies.”

“Families were never what you wanted them to be. We all wanted what we couldn't have: the perfect child, the doting husband, the mother who wouldn't let go. We live in our grown-up dollhouses completely unaware that, at any moment, a hand might come in and change around everything we'd become accustomed to.”