“Splat. Without thought, she’d thrown mud all over his face. So much for femme fatale. He sputtered in disbelief, then roared, “What the ever-livin’ feck—”

“Despite my fears, tears of joy streamed down my face as I held my precious baby boy in my arms for the first time and thought “What did I ever do without him?” I loved him so much. He was perfect.”

“He had been drunk over in town, and laid in the gutter all night, and he was a sight to look at. A body would a thought he was Adam, he was just all mud.”

“I have sometimes thought that his bursts of imaginative talk were fatal to his poetic gift. He squandered too much in the heat of personal communication.”

“She wondered why she’d ever thought trusting someone who wore that much eyeliner was a good idea.”

“He sat a long time and he thought about his life and how little of it he could ever have foreseen and he wondered for all his will and all his intent how much of it was his doing.”