“A faint smell of lilac filled the air. There was always lilac in this part of town. Where there were grandmothers, there was always lilac.”

“I could hear the crickets and tree frogs starting their night song in the small, wooded area behind us. A faint smell of lilac filled the air. There was always lilac in this part of town. Where there were grandmothers, there was always lilac.”

“The levee had always been my beach, the world beyond it, my ocean. That’s as close as it got here, anyway. No waves, no dolphins, no white sand, no sea gulls. If you were lucky enough, though, every once in a while you did get to see a crane, or a beaver.”

“She always used to say that the past is a relentless parasite in its quest, feeding off of the senses, looking for anything that will trigger a memory–forever there to complicate the present, forever there to remind us that it will always be a piece of us. I never had a clue as to what she meant, until now.”

“Every small town that I had ever been to had had a caboose.”

“Dreams would always end with you, and then mornings would steal you away with a cruelty that haunted my days.”

“I just want her to know that she's still beautiful, after all these years, and that I'm here - always,”