Grief can be a burden, but also an anchor. You get used to the weight, how it holds you in place.

She bought seeds and raided nurseries and mulched and composted and spent full days with her hands full of earth, coaxing life our of the dry, dull grass my father had spent years pushing a mower over.

Really, it had been stupid to expect anything anyway. A few late nights does not a habit, or a relationship, make.

Maybe the truth was, it shouldn't be so easy to be amazing. Then everything would be. It's the things you fight for and struggle with before earning that have the greatest worth. When something's difficult to come by, you'll do that much more to make sure it's even harder--if not impossible--to lose.

I would have thought this would make me feel better.. Getting to be the one to leave and not the one left behind. But it didn't. Not at all.

To me she said, 'It's this stupid gotcha thing, they've been doing it for weeks now. Leaping out at each other and us, scaring the hell out of everyone.'It's a game of wits,' Bert said to me.'Half-wits,' Kristy added.