“The air was thick with nostalgia, scented by the bonfire, and alight with fireflies. Their tiny yellow lights danced with orange embers against the starry sky, and she wondered again why she'd left home when the world was so magical right where she was.”

“Do you think Kinkade is Welland-Dowd?" she wondered Chase burst into laughter so booming that every head on the street rotated, startled. Oh,God. She'd just understood when she'd said it aloud. Welland-Dowd. Well-endowed.”

“Surely Tillie knew glitter on wrinkled cleavage was a sin.”

“Carter dragged her onto his lap and held her in the same way, in the same loft, like seven years had never passed. This time though, he shed a few tears along with her.”

“In 2008, I was the woman who thought she had the world by the tail: the "perfect life." In 2010, I was the woman without hope who thought she had no life left to live. Which woman am I today? Neither. Both were illusions.”

“Yet, when we talked, when we were together, she seemed so familiar. Seemed to know who I was, where I was coming from. She knew me better than I knew myself, I think. She was easy to be with. And I wanted to be with her, like all the time.”

“Well, it’s not as though he cannot help it, you see. The…saving of things. I suspect it’s Captain Flint’s way of telling the world, ‘This is how it’s done.’”She wondered if it was also Flint’s way of showing the world, “This is how you could have saved me when I was a boy.”