“She had died at age twelve, and by now she was nothing but the memory of love-- nothing, now, but bones.”
“She had built a safe world where love didn't matter—and now she had nothing but stuff.”
“Now that she had nothing to lose, she was free.”
“But it was equally clear to her that this was her fate, that she had called its name and it had come to her, and she could do nothing now but own it.”
“...She felt that nothing could kill her hope now, nothing. She was seventy-five and she was going to make some changes in her life.”
“In the beginning, she had hauted me, haunted my dreams, but even now, just weeks later, she was slipping away, falling apart in my memory and everyone else's, dying again.”