“If we had not met, that day, I think I would have imagined you somehow.”

“I want you to know ..... 'I know this day is the most special day of my life."i smiled at him,imagining him smiling back at me. "Because this is the day we met.”

“We would never have met," he explained, voice dropping to a husky note. "I would have gone about my life and not thought I was missing anything. You would have – you would have painted obsessively, all those transformative images, and I would be someone unimagined and unknown, and I cannot decide whether it would be trite to call that a tragedy or if I should resent you for making this – all this death – somehow bearable, tolerable for the tenuous joy I have gained. You steal my anger and leave me dazed."He stopped, took a shaking breath, then laughed."I sound like Pan's understudy, failing to channel Shakespeare. There's no way to do more than guess what would have happened if Fisher Charteris and Madeleine Cost met one day in a world which had never feared dust, any more than we can be certain of surviving two years, or two days. I can't speak to what-ifs, but I know I will always be glad to have been here in this moment with you.”

“I always tried to imagine what it would be like to open your door to find something you had given up on. maybe it had seen places you never had, been rerouted and passed through so many strange hands, but still somehow found its way back to you, all before the day even began. ”

“I wish I had met you first. Before we met them.”

“I would not have dreamed back then, could never have imagined, that one day I would be a childless mother too.”