“At least I'd done something right to day. Maybe. Probably.”

“Maybe this happens to you every day, but I think it was the first time I could hardly wait to show something that I'd done to someone who would care besides my mother. You know how that feels?”

“That sense of happiness just out beyond my reach - I'm not sure I'd grasped that exactly, but I'd got something close to it, contentment maybe, or at least a functioning routine with regular rewards.”

“God, Alex loved me.He truly did. I just hadn't learned that time is elastic: it stretches and gives, far more graciously than it probably should, and then one day, when you least expect it, something simply ruptures, and you sheltered life is done.”

“My weaknesses... I wish I could come up with something. I'd probably have the same pause if you asked me what my strengths are. Maybe they're the same thing.”

“Maybe I would have been something you'd be good at. Maybe you would have been something I'd be good at.”