There was mystery at the heart of any of marriage, secrets even people close to it would never know.

Theirs was a private language, not shared with the rest of the world, and so exempt from censure, sheer burlesque.

While she was away, he'd forgotten how powerfully she broadcast her feelings, filling the house like a kind of nerve gas.

The single dinner plate, the silent house, the tumbler in the sink--this was how it would be if he lost her. His mother had gone quickly, from liver cancer, the mass discovered too late. He thought of his father alone in his condo, crossing off days on the calendar like a prisoner. He'd survived her by thirteen years, yet every time Henry saw him, he quoted her as if they'd just spoken. Henry could picture himself doing the same to the children. He already lived too much in his memory.

Who knew what happened in a marriage, what bargains and compromises people struck?

There was a lot about Kim and J.P. he didn't get.... he was confused by their lack of romance. As a father, he was at times grateful for that missing intensity, but as a man who liked to surprise his wife with flowers, it baffled him. Maybe he was old-fashioned, but to him a couple meant a strong bond, with positive and negative charges constantly arcing between them. He'd never seen Kim and J.P. kiss, let alone argue.