“But it was important to simply be sought, even if you didn‟t ever want to be found.”

“If this was my instinct talking, I didn‟t want to hear what it was saying.”

“Nothing‟s going to change, Jamie had said that day, but I‟d known even then this wasn‟t true. My mother had always been the point that I calibrated myself against. In knowing where she was, I could always locate myself, as well. These months she‟d been gone, I felt like I‟d been floating, loose and boundaryless, but now that I knew where she was, I kept waiting for a kind of certainty to kick in. It didn‟t. Instead, I was more unsure than ever, stuck between this new life and the one I‟d left behind”

“Looking at her, I thought again how beautiful she was - even in jeans and a T-shirt, no makeup, she was breathtaking. So much so that it was hard to believe she could ever have looked at herself and seen anything else.”

“You couldn't see the key around my neck: it hung too low under both collars. But if I leaned in close, I could make it out, buried deep beneath. Out of sight, hard to recognize, but still able to be found, even if I was the only one to ever look for it.”

“Sure, there was no guarantee any of these things would actually happen as he envisioned. But maybe that wasn‟t the point.It was the planning that counted, whether it ever came to fruition or not.”

“Don't be a fool. Don't give up something important to hold onto someone who can't even say they love you.”