“Myrna could spend happy hours browsing bookcases. She felt if she could just get a good look at a person’s bookcase and their grocery cart, she’d pretty much know who they were.”

“After all she’d been through, it irked her that he thought he could just look at her and know who she was. She didn't even know who she was.”

“Lillian is humming to herself, stretched out on top of my bookcase like she doesn’t mind the heat, and of course she doesn’t. Even when she was alive, she could never seem to get warm. The tune she’s humming is thin and tight with anxiety. It’s the opposite of carefree.”

“No one else could see all the bodies she’d left behind, but they were there, looking at her. Or maybe that was just her, looking at herself, and not liking what she saw. Knowing she could never escape her own judging gaze.”

“Was there no time in there he could have said, "Oh,hey,meet me at the magical bookcase at the butt-crack of dawn tomorrow,cool?"And what the heck did he want to do at that bookcase?”

“And how heartbreaking, because if it were all just a few degrees different, she is pretty sure they could be quite happy together.”