The people who matter most in our lives stay with us, haunting our most ordinary moments. They’re with us in the grocery store, as we turn a corner, chat with a friend. They rise up...

Mrs. Scatcherd raps Dutchy’s knuckles several times with a long wooden ruler, though it seems to me a halfhearted penalty. He barely winces, then shakes his hands twice in the air and winks at me....

She has never tried to find out what happened to her family — her mother or her relatives in Ireland. But over and over, Molly begins to understand as she listens to the tapes, Vivian...

I learned long ago that loss is not only probable but inevitable. I know what it means to lose everything, to let go of one life and find another. And now I feel, with a...

As with Dutchy and Carmine on the train, this little cluster of women has become a kind of family to me. Like an abandoned foal that nestles against cows in the barnyard, maybe I just...

I have come to think that’s where Heaven is, a place in the memories of other where our best selves live

Know what a symbol is?…Shit that stands for shit.

The smallest things get to her. It’s as if she assumes everything will go right, and when it doesn’t — which, of course, is pretty often — she is surprised and affronted.

She is so white-hot furious she can barely see. She stokes the fire of her hatred, feeding it tidbits about bigoted Dina and spineless mushmouth Ralph, because she knows that just beyond the rage is...

So is it just human nature to believe that things happen for a reason — to find some shred of meaning even in the worst experiences?” Molly asks when Vivian reads some of these stories...

Molly learned long ago that a lot of the heartbreak and betrayal that other people fear their entire lives, she has already faced. Father dead. Mother off the deep end. Shuttled around and rejected time...

He reaches over and touches my necklace. “You still have it. That gives me faith.” “Faith in what?””God, I suppose. No, I don’t know. Survival.

It’s as if she assumes everything will go right, and when it doesn’t – which, of course, is pretty often – she is surprised and affronted.

When something terrible happens, a lifetime of small events and unremarkable decisions, of unresolved anger, and unexplored fears begins to play itself out in ways you least expect. You’ve been going along from one day...