“He wished he had feelings for Andi, wanted to be interested in her...But there were 10 quick reasons why he wasn't interested. The biggest: Bailey Flanigan. He could hear her laugh from across the room. He sighed, and it felt like it came from the basement of his soul.”

“They'd had fun, for sure. They laughed and enjoyed being together. But if she was painfully honest with herself, something was missing. Something in the way Tim looked at her. She remembered her mom's word. "I saw the way he looked at you...he adores you." Maybe that was it. Tim looked at her on a surface level. He smiled and seemed happy to see her. But When Cody looked at her, there were no layers left, nothing her didn't reveal, nothing he couldn't see. He didn't really look at her so much as he looked into her. To the deepest, most real places in her heart and soul.”

“The Flanigan family had a love that could laugh through anything, a love that knew no color barriers or resentment.”

“A verse came to mind, one that has comforted Kari before. It was the shortest verse in the Bible: Jesus wept. If he cried over Jerusalem, if he cried over the death of Lazarus, surely he was crying now over the death of her dreams, the death of her marriage.”

“More tears rushed from the depths of her tortured soul. ... The losses piled up.”

“As long as he was breathing, God's greatest task for him was not yet finished. His highest purpose in life was still unfulfilled. ... God still had plans for him.”

“He called it The Bridge because that was how felt about books. They connected the past and the present, the present and the future. Books brought people together and gave them a path to worlds they would not otherwise experience.”