“It's the closest place to nowhere that she can think of. And nowhere is exactly where she wants to be today.”

“Everything she did and love, everything she was, required language.”

“She read it again. It was fascinating and surreal, like reading a diary that had been hers when she was a teenager, secret and heartfelt words written by a girl she only vaguely remembered. She wished she'd written more. Her words mad her feel sad and proud, powerful and relieved.”

“She felt almost spellbound by him, as if he were a magnet pulling her to him.”

“Alice watched and listened and focused beyond the words the actress spoke. She saw her eyes become desperate, searching, pleading for truth. She saw them land softly and gratefully on it. Her voice felt at first tentative and scared. Slowly, and without getting louder, it grew more confident and then joyful, playing sometimes like a song. Her eyebrows and shoulders and hands softened and opened, asking for acceptance and offering forgiveness. Her voice and body created an energy that filled Alice and moved her to tears. She squeezed the beautiful baby in her lap and kissed his sweet-smelling head.The actress stopped and came back into herself. She looked at Alice and waited.“Okay, what do you feel?”“I feel love. It’s about love.”

“In the ladies' room, Alice studied her image in the mirror. The reflected older woman's face didn't quite match the picture that she had of herself in her mind's eye.”

“We both laugh. I like the sound of my mother’s laugh. I wish she’d found these pills when I was a kid, that I wasn’t learning the sound of my mother’s laughter at the age of thirty-seven and at the price of a traumatic brain injury. I look over at her pillbox. It suddenly occurs to me that she took many more pills than should be prescribed solely for depression. What else could she be taking medication for? I wonder.”