Traffic moved quickly and with a sense of community, as though all drivers were tenants in this fast forward-moving form.

For years Bob had lived with the shadow of his not-children appearing before him.

"Stay in the present," Elaine would say

Bob's ancient inner Bobness had returned.

"You know what Jimmy would say, don't you? He'd say there's no crying in baseball."

By the time the bail commissioner showed up, Bob's weariness seemed like a large wet coat he was wearing.

Zach came through the door, his face as white as paper.

"I thought, Jesus, if you can't speak the truth in a shrink's office, where can you?"

How could he describe what he felt? The unfurling of an ache so poignant it was almost erotic, this longing, the inner silent gasp as though in the face of something unutterably beautiful, the desire to put his head down on the big loose lap of this town, Shirley Falls.

He came to understand this had a danger altogether different from the dangers in the camp. Living in a world where constantly one turned and touched incomprehension–they did not comprehend, he did not comprehend–gave the air the lift of uncertainty and this seemed to wear away something in him, always he felt unsure of what he wanted, what he thought, even what he felt.

They were not from Maine, Susan remembered that, and they had seemed–filing into a pew each Christmas Sunday service–as exquisite as a flock of foreign birds.

The thick sugary pull of life had gone.

The Burgess boys rode up the turnpike as twilight arrived. It arrived gently, the sky remaining a soft blue as the trees along either side of the unfolding pavement darkened.

What was this thing that Jimmy had? The intangible, compelling part of Jimmy?
It's that he showed no fear, Bob realized. He never had. And people hated fear. People hated fear more than anything.

You couldn't fake it. It showed in the glance of an eye, in the way you entered a room, walked up the steps to a bandstand.

Always on the exit ramp, Susan had once said of Jim.

"Work toward something. That's how it's done. You belong to society, you give to society."

A silence sat in the room that felt so momentarily present and pulsating Bob didn't dare disturb it by raising his glass.

The key to contentment was to never ask why; she had learned that long ago.

she learned–freshly, scorchingly–of the privacy of sorrow. It was as though she had been escorted through a door into some large and private club that she had not known existed. Women who miscarried. Society did not care much for them. It really didn't. And the women in the club mostly passed each other silently. People outside the club said, "You'll have another one."

The snow sparkled, and the river sparkled, as though diamonds had been openhandedly flung throughout the air.

A crazy parent, America was. Good and openhearted one way, dismissive and cruel in others.

Margaret Estaver's office looked like Margaret. Unorganized, and gentle, and welcoming.

But by October there were many days when the swell of rightness, loose-limbedness, and gentle gravity came to him.

So she lay awake at night and at times there was a curious peacefulness to this, the darkness warm as though the deep violet duvet held its color unseen, wrapping around Pam some soothing aspect of her youth, as her mind wandered over a life that felt puzzlingly long; she experienced a quiet surprise that so many lifetimes could be fit into one.

No exchange rate for the confidence of youth.

Memory. Open-palmed it passed before her scenes, and then would close, taking away the beginning, the end, the framework these scenes existed within.

And it was too late. No wants to believe something is too late, but it is always becoming too late, and then it is.

This tiny piece of knowledge was nothing more than a dust particle hanging in the air.

Shame, bone-deep, tightened his arms.

Helen, feeling this was contained in the face of her sister-in-law, thought the word Rube, and then felt very tired deep down inside herself. She did not want to think that, or be that way, and she thought it was awful such a word came to her, and no sooner did she think that than to her horror she thought the word Nigger, which had sometimes happened to her before, Nigger, nigger, as though her mind had Tourette's syndrome and these terrible things went uncontrollably through it.

His first instinct was to get up and close the door, and the very nature of the complaint made this woman dangerous. She could have been sitting there quietly holding an automatic machine gun in her lap; to be alone with her would be like handing her another magazine of bullets.

She said kindly, "I think there is no perfect way to live,"

Everyone on the train seemed innocent and dear to him, their eyes unfocused with morning reveries that were theirs alone, perhaps words spoken to them earlier, or words they dreamed of speaking; some read newspapers, many listened through earbuds to their own soundtrack, but most stared absently as Bob did–and he was moved by the singularity and mystery of each person he saw.

Her face had the naked look of someone whose glasses were removed

"What am I going to do, Bob? I have no family."
"You have family," Bob said. "You have a wife who hates you. Kids who are furious with you. A brother and sister who make you insane."