That’s just how it is. You get halfway through your life and realize you’ve done it all wrong. You’ve picked the wrong jobs and followed the wrong dreams. Every decision from your cradle to the counter of an upscale children’s boutique in Portland, Oregon gratingly names little fig where you now stand tethered at the age of thirty-seven for thirteen-dollars-an-hour-plus-commission has been all wrong.

After she packed her few bags into the back of her car and hugged him, Rosalind never saw him again. After a few weeks it was like she’d never known him at all, like summer friendships she’d strike up as a child when the family stayed a few weeks at the beach or another city. The friendship was site specific. She couldn’t miss it any more than she’d miss the Eiffel Tower in her backyard. It was where it belonged, somewhere in the past.

He turned to her and smiled. “OK. And you paint. Men come and go,” he said, wagging a finger. “Be good to yourself. What you have? Inside? That’s permanent. Any man doesn’t see that, doesn’t deserve you.

But now she regarded her sister with curious distance. She’d been so actively excluded from everything important to her she felt suddenly, intensely alone.

They didn’t talk the way new lovers often do, sharing everything; they were selective and wary. Sometime it seemed to her their relationship was mostly physical, something she enjoyed.

How could she love someone she barely knew? A year ago she would have said it was impossible: love was a choice people made daily and longevity was its measure. Love did not crash land in your living room leaving you squinting into daylight, picking through the debris of your former life. Only now could she see that it was sometimes a phantom thing, a stray that wandered the periphery of your life and moved in the minute you opened the door for who knew how long?

Richard and I always called you the punisher. We never had to discipline you. Not like we did Hermione or Polly. Because you were so hard on yourself. If there’s anything I want for you now, as a mother, even if I don’t ‘deserve’ it is: I want you to be gentle. I want you to have compassion. For yourself and everyone. It’s what every parent wants. If their any good. Which maybe I wasn’t...

Remember the good times---you'll need them during the bad," a family friend had boozily warned her at their wedding.

you really got to do it--it's like you don't know what love is until you have a kid.

Someone has broken your heart. I knew there was something about you. That's it, isn't it?'A little," Sara said, suddenly self-conscious.I'm sorry.'It happens." She shrugged, straining for nonchalance.Maybe,' he said. 'But if it's your destiny, what can you do but accept it.