“Children were experiments, and his had failed.”

“Yvette had never talked about her marriage - she was a smart girl, and she knew you had no right to complain about someone you got all the way to the altar with. You made that choice, even if you were a child when you did it, and the marriage vow was sacred.”

“Chet suddenly wished she had quit teaching the class because of him, that he’d had any effect on her at all.”

“He held his hands tightly together and cursed his daughter for bringing the terrible world, with its humiliation and longing, back to his door.”

“She craved a family, not having had enough of one to understand what a pain in the ass it was.”

“At the simplicity of the gesture, he felt a pang: the raw nerve of his loneliness exposed.”

“His heart felt dangerously full, for the first time in years. That dried-up battered organ, suddenly flush with love. It could kill him.”