“Still, he's Emory. He doesn't have to walk her home, especially considering how snitty she was to him. He didn't have to come in and stop her cruelty to Fay, or watch over her as he has evidently been continuing to do, drawing those pictures on the Reeses' sidewalk. She knew the pictures were for her and her children. She and Emory did not always spell things out, but she knew, when he drew pictures, what they meant.”

“She had not known how to tell him that his loving whispers were always in her ears, like a story she’d been told, the story of a thing she did not deserve. But he understood. He called those thoughts “the baby teeth of a snake,” and swore he would rip them out of her, and pledged to prove to her that the opposite was true. And he didn’t even have to explain to her what he meant by “the opposite”; she knew it was the opposite of her.”

“It was over. He knew, but she did not. He could tell by the way she nuzzled him, how her body relaxed in his embrace, how she sighed when he kissed the top of her head. She was still hopeful, he thought, and that made her beautiful. Suddenly he could not bear to imagine a life without her.”

“She would tell him what she wanted in her life--her hopes and dreams for the future--and he would listen intently and then promise to make it all come true. And the way he said it made her believe him, and she knew how much he meant to her.”

“She couldn't believe what she did then. Before she could stop herself, she leaned up on tiptoes, put her arms around his neck, and kissed him on the mouth. Her lips brushed over his for the barest of seconds, but it was still a kiss, and when she came to her senses and dared to pull away and look at him, he had the most curious expression on his face.Brodick knew she regretted her sponatenity, but as he stared into her brilliant green eyes, he also knew, with a certainty that shook him to the core, that his life had just been irrevocably changed by this mere slip of a woman.”

“There were days when she’d open her eyes and be him for six hours in a row; she knew all his secrets and nothing he had done seemed wrong to her, she knew how it was, how things had been, she was there. There were days when he touched the tip of her nose and it was enough, a miracle of plenty.But who finds happiness interesting?”