“...tried to be faultless as a parent, but still she worries that in the end, all her love for her daughter will not compensate for the loss she suffered as a baby”

“Fine,' Aria conceded. 'But *I'll* carry her.' She grabbed the baby seeat from the back. A smell of baby powder wafted up to greet her, bringing a lump in her throat. Her father Byron, and his girlfriend, Meredith, had just had a baby, and she loved Lola with all her heart. If she looked too long at this baby, she might love her just as much.”

“How desperate she had been for a storybook ending, and a life to which Gaia would always want to return; because her daughter's departure was hurtling towards Kay like a meteorite, and she foresaw the loss of Gaia as a calamity that would shatter her world.”

“Phyllis, then seventeen, had grown into a lovely girl, although she was still in school uniform.Thus, Hera made it known that her beautiful daughter`s virginity was once more for sale & she had set the asking price at twenty thousand dollars. She would use the proceeds from the sale to clear her debts, & the surplus, she would give to Vicky in compensation for the three thousand dollars she had paid four years earlier to preserve Phyllis` virginity.[MMT]”

“Lily kept her smile. She knew a little something about loss and what it was all about in the end. She searched for her answers in those items left behind.”

“It seemed to her that almost any pain was sympathetic to her loss and she inserted herself immediately into the concept of fantastic suffering.”