Sharing the good and bad times with a lifelong friend made the business of living a lot more bearable.

My childhood had been vanishing bit by bit while I’d been living in New York, trying to pretend it had never existed. Maybe that was what the old saying – that a person can never really go home again – was all about. You couldn’t go home because even though home might still be there in brick and mortar, everything else would be unrecognizable.

For the first time in nine years, I felt embarrassed about my abrupt departure and the complete severing of all my ties. My actions had been justified – I was still sure of that. But all the time I’d been away, I’d assumed that everything had remained the same, that people and beliefs hadn’t changed. Which was stupid, because I hadn’t stayed the same. I felt a little of my old resolve not to look back shift and redistribute itself, like sand in and outgoing tide.

But time changed all things, oxidizing friendships like old copper pots, so they no longer saw their reflection in each other’s faces.

Because she needed ore than sleep. She needed oblivion.

I don’t hold on grudges, you know. They’re like expired milk in the fridge.

Grief was like that, Ceecee had learned. It either opened your heart or closed it.

Ceecee told me to wait to get married, to be sure. Not about how much I loved him, but how much I could bear to lose.

But I don’t believe in luck. I believe that love creates good fortune and builds empires, and it’s doubt and envy that destroy both.

I was like a child leaving a gift unwrapped, the anticipation more exciting than the reality.