“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?”

“Ross was a firm believer that you could not force circumstance. You could buckle your seat belt, but still crash the car. You could throw yourself in front of an oncoming train, but somehow survive. You could wait for years to find a ghost, and then have one sneak up on you when you were too busy falling in love with a woman to pay attention. To that end, he made the conscious decision to stop waiting for Lia. When he least expected her, that was when she would show up.”

“The first question she was asked was What do you do? as if that were enough to define you. Nobody ever asked you who you really were, because that changed. You might be a judge or a mother or a dreamer. You might be a loner or a visionary or a pessimist. You might be the victim, and you might be the bully. You could be the parent, and also the child. You might wond one day and heal the next.”

“If it's us", she whispered, "how come you get to decide?"When he didn't answer - couldn't answer - she turned and stared out the front window. As it turned out, they were still in the parking lot.They hadn't gotten anywhere at all.”

“If you were drifting with a thousand other people, could you really still say you were lost?”

“Was it the act of giving birth that made you a mother? Did you lose that label when you relinquished your child? If people were measured by their deeds, on the one hand, I had a woman who had chosen to give me up; on the other, I had a woman who'd sat up with me at night when I was sick as a child, who'd cried with me over boyfriends, who'd clapped fiercely at my law school graduation. Which acts made you more of a mother?Both, I realized. Being a parent wasn't just about bearing a child. It was about bearing witness to its life.”

“you can love a person and still hate the decisions they've made, can't you?”