“How upset is she?” “Let me put it this way,” his brother began, “All the shit you’ve shoveled from stalls in your life is nothing compared to how deep you’re in it now.”

“With every lecture, you’re forced to look again at every choice you’ve made over the lesson-by-lesson chain of your entire life. And after all these years, you see how little you have to work with, how limited your life and education have been. How scant was your courage and curiosity. Not to mention your expectations.”

“He hugged her again, before she could put some distance between them. Then the most sneaky wolf in the den lowered his voice and whispered, “But you’ve got an advantage, sweetheart. You’re already in his head. And you know how to mess with it.”

“Now, go shovel some shit.”

“She was still there inside me now, just as she always was: a life put on hold, a memory I didn't know how to handle.”

“I'm lonely. And I'm lonely in some horribly deep way and for a flash of an instant, I can see just how lonely, and how deep this feeling runs. And it scares the shit out of me to be this lonely because it seems catastrophic.”