“Maybe all the events of the last few months had occured for just one reason - to bring Thad and me together. Perhaps our being here on the Titanic wasn't pre-destination, but rather, destiny.”

“All these inexplicable events that have occurred in my life so far...it's as though they were all ingeniously programmed from the start of bringing me here.”

“If destiny could bring two people together, then it could just as easily tear them apart, and, if it could tear two people apart, then it could just as easily bring them back together again. There was no beginning, middle and end to destiny. It wasn't neat and manageable. It was random and scary.”

“Songs and smells will bring you back to a moment in time more than anything else. It's amazing how much can be conjured with a few notes of a song or a solitary whiff of a room. A song you didn't even pay attention to at the time, a place that you didn't even know had a particular smell. I wonder what will someday bring back Dex and our few months together. Maybe the sound of Dido's voice. Maybe the scent of the Aveda shampoo I've been using all summer.”

“The pages that follow will be our journey of the life we built together here in Concord, North Carolina. These pages will reveal fragments from the past and events that occurred along the way.”

“She never discussed her past in detail, but a few tidbits she’d dropped here and there over the last few months they’d all been hanging together convinced Ronnie and Sissy that the woman hadn’t merely lived on the wild side, but instead owned prime real estate there.”