It's So Much Easier To Have No

As The Three Of Them Walked Home From The Trees, Nobody Needed To Say It, But Ama Knew. They Had Questioned Their Friendship. They Had Searched And Wondered, Looking For A Sign. And All Along They'd Had Their Trees. You Couldn't Wear Them. You Couldn't Pass Them Around. They Offered No Fashion Advantage. But They Had Roots. They Lived.

Grief Was Like A Newborn, And The First Three Months Were Hard As Hell, But By Six Months You'd Recognized Defeat, Shifted Your Life Around, And Made Room For It.

We Aren't In High School. We Aren't Really In Our Families And We Aren't In Our Houses. Those Are The Places We Grew Up And The Times We Spent Together, But They Aren't Us. If Think They Are, Then We're Lost, Because Times End And Places Are Lost. We Aren't Any Place Or Any Time . . . We Are Everywhere.

Different People Were Good At Different Things, Lena Mused. Lena Was Good At Writing Thank-you Notes, For Instance, And Effie Was Good At Being Happy.

She Wasn’t Sure If He Wanted More From Her Or If He Wanted Less. Maybe It Was Both. Maybe It Was Always Both.