And what there is to learn from almost any human experience is that your own interests usually do not come first where other people are concerned — e… - Richard Ford

My parents...were people running from the past, who didn't look back at much if they could help it, and whose whole life always lay somewhere in the offing.

She looked at me and the expression on her face was an expression of dislike, one I hadn't seen before but knew right away. Later I would see it turned toward other people. But the first time was looking at me and was because she believed she'd done all she could that was correct and the best thing, and it had only gotten her stuck with me. And I couldn't do anything that mattered. Though if I could I would've had my father be there, or Warren Miller, or somebody who had the right words that would take the place of hers, anybody she could speak to without just hearing her own voice in a room and having to go about the trouble of pretending she did not feel absolutely alone.

And though they may both have felt that something had died between them, something they may not even have been aware or until it was gone and disappeared from their lives forever, they must've felt - both of them - that there was something of themselves, something important, that could not live at all in any other way but by their being together, much as they had been before.