“A woman gasped. Through the open door I could see a sliver of carolers, some faces peering inside at the scattered tatters of money, some faces turned to the sky and the snow, now beginning to fall. And there, in front of them, in the room with us, stood the family, their outlines barely visible within the weight of the rooms light. It was a light that shone over our faces, our wounds and scars. It was a light so brilliant and white it could have been beamed from heaven, and Brian and I could have been angels basking in it. But it wasn’t and we weren’t.”

“It was a light that shone over our faces, our wounds and scars. It was a light so brilliant and white it could have been beamed from heaven, and Brian and I could have been angels, basking in it. But it wasn’t, and we weren’t.”

“The room was darker and smelled of evergreen, as though my mother had been dreaming of trees.”

“He spoke so slowly, cobwebs could have formed between his words.”

“At night we turned all the lights in every room of our house on. We turned the lights on the front porch on. We turned the lights on the back porch and over the garage on too. We wanted to keep the darkness that surrounded our house and us as far away from us as we could.”

“Somewhere, in some shadowy bedroom of a leaf-strewn town, a father bolts the door to a child's room, then steps closer to the bed. In a neighbor's garden lurks a weed with a funny, blade-petaled flower, its poison choking the red roses. Somewhere a car is crashing; a phone is ringing in the center of night. The spider waits poised in the slipper. The bird swoops headlong into glass it thought was farther air. The strangler envisions a neighborhood of throats. The head finds the noose; the foot kicks the chair.”

“I understood now that all of us have that place inside that wants to be part of something, that needs the comfort and companionship of loved ones. Within each of us, there is an empty room, and when we open the door, light flows in. The wider we open it, and the longer we leave it open, the brighter our souls become.”