We're not mad," he began, meaning he was. He was always a plural when mad, as though grammatically throwing his lot in with her mother gave him the power of her authority.

A woman steps out of the back door after an hour of him sitting. Younger than either of us, blonde with a tinge of gray at her temples, the light creases of age in the corners of her eyes, beautiful in the untouchable way of mothers who are our exemplars for what we will admire in women when we come of age.

Mothers represent a genetic destiny for their daughters. In time, the daughters fill the style of shoes their mothers once wore and maybe find them not as constricting as they had imagined.

The boys he met at Annandale only understood one kind of woman. They needed to be coddled and cooed over as their own mothers had done their whole lives.

There are three people in your life: your great love, the one you want to have children with, and the one whom you can spend the rest of your life with. If you find that last one first, you have it made.