“Grief was like a terrible burden, but at least you could lay it down by the side of the road and walk away from it. Antonia had come only a few paces, but already she could turn and look back and not weep. It wasn't anything to do with forgetting. It was just accepting. Nothing was ever so bad once you had accepted it.”

“In this way my mother fell short as a parent, which was something I had to learn to accept because it's how she was, and either you accept people as they are or you turn your back on them and walk away. Those are the choices: forbearance or flight, although that philosophy was slow in coming to me, and for many years, I expected more from people than they could give.”

“This time, there was no escape, I could not turn away, could not leave without accepting what I had done. There was only one way to the other side, and that was through the pain.”

“When the pace of our feet matched perfectly, I felt a deep inner pang of satisfaction. I could have gone on walking like that forever, side by side with him. There had been few times in my life I had ever inhabited a moment so fully, with no loneliness lurking at the edges.”

“Each of them had done their best. Matt was still his friend. For Meredith, maybe the day would come when she could look at him and not think “inhuman” — or at least not think it immediately and constantly. Maybe Bonnie, the moth, would be able to stay away from the unholy flame. Now, there was something to worry about. He could all too easily see Bonnie taking a walk on the very wild side with Damon. His brother had a soft spot for her already, she knew. But if either of them had a problem, he already knew what he had to do to find a plan for a solution.Just look up.”

“Irma, she said. But I had started to walk away. I heard her say some more things but by then I had yanked my skirt up and was running down the road away from her and begging the wind to obliterate her voice. She wanted to live with me. She missed me. She wanted me to come back home. She wanted to run away. She was yelling all this stuff and I wanted so badly for her to shut up. She was quiet for a second and I stopped running and turned around once to look at her. She was a thimble-sized girl on the road, a speck of a living thing. Her white-blond hair flew around her head like a small fire and it was all I could see because everything else about her blended in with the countryside. He offered you a what? she yelled. An espresso! I yelled back. It was like yelling at a shorting wire or a burning bush. What is it? she said. Coffee! I yelled. Irma, can I come and live--I turned around again and began to run.”