“I wonder what I would find if I could go back and decipher the layers, if it were possible to delve into my past that way, but realize that, even if it were possible, it would be futile.”

“Progress? You call this progress?” I was almost shouting now, anger spilled out of me as if I could no longer contain it. “If that’s what it is, then I don’t know if I want it.” The tears were flooding now, uncontrollable. “I don’t want it!” I closed my eyes and abandoned myself to my grief. It felt better, somehow, to be helpless.”

“I step back further, until I feel cold tiles against my back. It is then I get the glimmer that I associate with memory. As my mind tries to settle on it, it flutters away, like ashes caught in a breeze, and I realize that in my life there is a then, a before, though before what I cannot say, and there is a now, and there is nothing between the two but a long, silent emptiness that has led me here, to me and him, in this house.”

“There were never going to be any happy endings for me. I know that now. But that is all right.”

“I want him to be happy. And I want you to be happy, too. Even if you can only find that happiness without me.”

“I couldn't imagine how i would get from here to there. i couldn't imagine living through a whole string of identical days.”

“He put his hand on mine. I fell into him, knowing what he would do, what he must do, and he did. He opened his arms and held me, and I let him embrace me. “It’s okay,” he said. “It’s okay.”