“The gastliness of nothing. Because I was nobody's sister now.”

“Was the feeling that all is right with the world, my world, because your were its foundations, formed in childhood and with me grown into adulthod -- was that to replaced by nothing? The ghastliness of nothing. Because I was nobody's sister now.”

“Because you are my sister in every fiber of my being....but there are aother strands that link us, that wouldn't be seen by even the strongest electron microscope.......We are conjoined by hundreds os thousands of memories that silt down into you and stop being memories and become a part of who you are.”

“I hadn't understood funeral pyres before, but now I do. It's ghastly to burn someone you love but watching the smoke going into the sky, I think that's rather beautiful now. And I wish Tess could be up in the sky. Somewhere with color and light and air.”

“And I felt closer to you. Because you knew me so much better than I'd realized - and still loved me.”

“But, astonishingly, I'm not broken. I'm not destroyed. Terrified witless, shaking, retching with fear, yes. But no longer insecure. Because during my search for how you died, I somehow found myself to be a different person. ... Living my life. And it wouldn't be my grief for you that toppled the mountain, but love.”

“Because I'd rather feel guilty for the rest of my life than for her to have felt a second's fear.”