It was fair to call it depression. She felt like shit, all the time. If that was depression, she had it. It must have been contagious. She’d caught i… - Lev Grossman

Up through around twenty-five he’d never even thought about his back: it was a balanced, frictionless, self-regulating system. Now it felt like a busted gearbox into which somebody had chucked a handful of sand.

Could the man really not have explained? Did his daughter really not understand what had happened? It didn’t add up. If they’d talked about it and figured things out it could have been a happy ending. People in fairy tales never just figured things out.

But you couldn’t mourn forever. Or you could, but as it turned out there were better things to do.