Mary and O'Neil

And isn’t silence, in its way, a good sign? That everything is well, that the ship is still steaming safely away from shore?

Arthur laughs at his son’s embarrassment, though he also knows that this is exactly the kind of thing he likes about her. What does anyone like? Freckles, the curve of hair where she tucks it behind an ear, the sound of her voice when she tells a joke, her great, gleaming trombone in its velvet case. O’Neil has had girlfriends before, but this, Arthur knows, is different; he is entering the web, the matrix of a thousand details that make another person real, not just an object to be wanted.

His son's transformation cannot be stopped, or hastened, or adjusted; the man he will become is already present, like a form emerging from a slab of stone. All that remains is to watch it happen.

Mary adored her mother with a hopeless affection, like an unrequited crush. She understood this feeling was common in middle children, as Mary was, but there was also a story.

Why did some images stay with us that way, he wondered, arbitrary flashes of life seared into memory, while others vanished without a trace?