“His father, who for years had refused to speak to Eddie, now lacked the strength to even try. He watched his son with heavy-lidded eyes. Eddie, after struggling to find even one sentence to say, did the only thing he could think of to do: He held up his hands and showed his father his grease-stained fingertips.”

“Your father was no longer a young man. he was already in his fifties.'Fifty-six,' Eddie said blankly.Fifty-six,' the old woman repeated. 'His body had been weakened, the ocean had left him vulnerable, pneumonia took hold of him, and in time, he died.'Because of Mickey?' Eddie said.Because of loyalty,' she said.People don’t die because of loyalty.'They don’t?' she smiled. 'Religion? government? Are we not loyal to such things, sometimes to the death?'Eddie shrugged.Better,' she said, 'To be loyal to one another.”

“Sometimes the children asked Eddie to lift them over his head, and when Eddie complied, he saw the mothers' sad smiles: He guessed it was the right lift but the wrong pair of arms.”

“A wind blew, and the sand around his drawing scattered. He wrapped his fingers inside his wife's, and Father Time rekindled a connection he had only ever had with her. He surrendered to that sensation and felt the final drops of their lives touch one another, like water in a cave, top meets bottom, Heaven meets Earth.As their eyes closed, a different set of eyes opened, and they rose from the ground as a shared south, up and up, a sun and a moon in a single sky.”

“I believe he died this way on purpose. I believe he wanted no chilling moments, no one to witness his last breath and be haunted by it, the way he had been haunted by his mother's death-notice telegram or by his father's corpse in the city morgue.”

“He had his time measures and he had her. That was his life. For as long as he could remember, it had been that way, Dor and Alli, even as children. "I do not want to die," she whispered."You will not die.""I want to be with you.""You are.”

“Eddie looked again at the graveside gathering. He wondered if he'd had a funeral. He wondered if anyone came. He saw the priest reading from the bible and the mourners lowering their heads. This was the day the Blue Man had been buried, all those years ago. Eddie had been there, a little boy, fidgeting through the ceremony, with no idea of the role he'd played in it."I still don't understand," Eddie whispered. "What good came from your death?""You lived," the Blue Man answered."But we barely knew each other. I might as well have been a stranger."The Blue Man put his arms on Eddie's shoulders. Eddie felt that warm, melting sensation."Strangers," the Blue Man said, "are just family you have yet to come to know.”