“It wears the salt out of you, it grinds you down a small chunk, boarding another train after five hours of sleep, your bags slung across your back and fending for silence again, this twelve-hour ride to New Orleans, city that care forgot, in which your sister awaits you, in which a nephew and niece and a house full of questions await you.”
“In movies, when the woman is dumped, one thing to do is to take all the love letters and pictures from photo booths and old T-shirts, and to set them on fire. This is to help the woman move on. I don’t have any pictures from photo booths. What I have is email, and a little blue folder on my hard drive called “Chats.” So, look what I did.”
“Ivan Yegoritch Krasnyhin, a fourth-rate journalist, returns home late at night, grave and careworn, with a peculiar air of concentration.”
“It was early evening, and still light out. The air was warm and still. We knew Alice Lee probably would be home after her day at the law office. I walked up a few wooden steps and knocked on a white wooden door. Its old brass knocker had “Alice F. Lee” engraved in feminine script. I took a step back. Nothing.”