What does love even mean when you can find it with so many people and things? - Gabrielle Zevin

CHIEF LAMBIASE IS a frequent visitor to the store, and to justify these visits, he buys books. Because Lambiase doesn't believe in wasting money, he reads the books, too. At first, he had mainly bought mass-market paperbacks — Jeffery Deaver and James Patterson (or whoever writes for James Patterson) — and then A.J. graduates him to trade paperbacks by Jo Nesbø and Elmore Leonard. Both authors are hits with Lambiase, so A.J. promotes him again to Walter Mosley and then Cormac McCarthy. A.J.'s most recent recommendation is Kate Atkinson's Case Histories.

It was funny how dad was more honest in a book that anyone in the world could pick up and read than he could be talking to me. Or maybe it was sad. One or the other. Sometimes it's hard to tell.

My grandmother was married for fifty-two years, until my grandfather died. She used to say that a bad marriage was one that hadn't had enough time to get good again.