“It’s wonderful,” his mother says, and I feel something old and familiar course through my blood. It fillsall four chambers of my heart, and I think maybe, just maybe, it’s happiness.”

“It’s true I’ve never been pregnant, but I know it’s like to lose the possibility of a baby. So of course I sympathize with Elizabeth, Phil! Deeply! My heart breaks for her. I’ve cried and cried for her each time she’s lost another baby.It’s just that sometimes I want to say to her, “Darling, maybe you don’t get to be a mother, but you still get to be a wife.”

“Maybe it’s something which can’t be defined,” Enso Roshi says. “Maybe it’s a question, to be lived.”

“It’s okay if you are. I was just wondering if maybe you were thinking about renegotiating our rules? Can I kiss you yet?”

“It’s brown.” So maybe I had the teeniest, tiniest, most infinitesimal amount of auburn in my hair. I was still a brunette. “It’s the lighting,” I said.“Yeah, maybe it’s the lightbulbs.” His smile brought up both sides of his mouth, and a dimple surfaced.”

“I just want some time, Mikhail, to think things through. It’s frightening, the way I am about you. I think about you every minute; I want to touch you, just to know I can, to feel you beneath my fingers. It’s as if you crawled into my head and my heart, even my body, and I can’t get you out.”