“We explored ourselves and each other until blue light buried the stars, and then she sent me home with leftovers and a new brand of dish soap that was on special at Shaw’s.”

- - -

“I absorbed the delicate contours of her face in the candlelight as the waiter, who grew up down the street from the Walcott-Schneiders and whose brother had just graduated from Cornell Law and who always made such good grades himself and who rather surprisingly and somewhat disappointingly had decided to pursue a career in the theater, refilled our champagne.”

- - -

“She didn’t believe in emailing Thank You Notes in lieu of handwriting Thank You Notes, but she did believe in me, and that made all the difference.”

- - -

“‘Hard drive error?’ I said, as she sat at the computer in her Lands’ End bathrobe, her face a landscape of bleak disillusionment. ’Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll give you a hard drive.’”

- - -

“‘Mother, May I?’ I murmured, because I’m all about consent.”

- - -

“I sat in the kitchen with her, sipping half-caff coffee and watching her clip coupons. The blades of her scissors parted and returned to each other over and over again, vacillating between coy and brazen.”

- - -

“She set her Jodi Picoult book down on the nightstand and I knew that it was on.”

- - -

“She takes the dog out and gets her purse and asks me with her eyes tell it to me she says with her eyes and I smile and she says it with her mouth her red mouth and I nod but she wants me to say it again with my mouth to say yes so I say Yes, my mountain flower, I want to go to Target.”