Now that Kate was safely out of the way—silenced permanently in a corner plot with a view of the freeway—the pedigreed vultures swooped in.

Marylou was breaking it off with the human race once and for all, leaving the whole miserable lot for good, and this time for real.

The only work he could find was at the truckers’ paradise on the north side of town where the main drag reverts into a numbered highway.

Sara had selected the young girl, and Teddy and Sara had trailed her from the noisy waterfront club.

You think Fine Arts is going to be a bird degree and then you have to take classes all through the summer and talk about art until you want to kill yourself and also everyone else.

I’m famous, and my sister Christine is ordinary. Saying it straight out like that feels strange, but it’s true. We’re identical twins, a fact that fascinates people.

When he came back from that first trip to India, all she could get out of him was that it was “awesome.” He was never a talker. It used to exasperate her when he was little; she’d want to shake him to get words out.

When lightning strikes the tulip poplar, five hundred years of leaf lifting crashes into splinter wood, and several notables roll over in their graves.

Outside the kitchen window, squirrels scattered the seed from the birdfeeder Paula’s dad had set up. The seeds gleamed in the sun like drops of water.