“I figured it out eventually," she says. She's sitting on the edge of the gurney again; her features slowly materialize as my vision clears. "It's momentum.""What?" I whisper. The feeling returning to my lips, spreading out to my fingertips and toes."Momentum," she repeats. "You can't just stand there if you want something to fly. You have to run.”

“Momentum,' She repeats. 'You can't just stand there if you want something to fly. You have to run.”

“I wanted to be rid of him," he says. He raises my chin with his thumb. "But not if it meant being rid of you. I climbed in beside you, and you put your head in my lap. You can't think I would have left you like that.""Look what it got you," I say."Tea in bed and you here in front of me," he says. "It was a terrible decision, and I confess I'd make it again.”

“As I go, I hear her screaming my name, in a brutal, bloody way, like she's being murdered, which maybe she is. But slowly. It will take her six years to die.”

“I wonder if she has figured out that I'll never love Linden, especially not in the way she does, and that he'll never love anyone the way he loves her. I wonder if she realizes, despite all her efforts to train me, that I can never take her place.”

“Do you know what my father used to say?" I ask her. "He used to say that songs had a heart. A crescendo that can make all your blood rush from your head to your toes.”

“Linden just wants to protect her, is what I want to say. She's all he has. I left him. I'm at arms reach, but I've left him.”