Sublime

She’s beneath the window, and the sunlight glows down on her perfectly round head, her sloped nose, her full cheeks. How am I not going to ruin you? I think, and then we both begin to cry. My dad hears me sniffling.

Gary is ten years older than me and perfect for his job. A big chunk of Missing Persons is getting people who stay far from cops to talk to you – street hookers to tell you about the new girl who matches that teenager on the news, homeless addicts to drop by and mention the guy who tried to sleep on their patch last night and looked a lot like that

William found it hard to picture his parents’ faces. He saw them at the train station, waving, but their forms were blurry. The idea of his father being depressed had no traction in William’s mind; it just slipped away. These sessions with this doctor, who paid attention to him—sank her eyes into him like fishhooks—were exhausting.

That Thomas had worked for the Chronicle since 1976 was easily established, as was the fact that he’d published three brief novels since that date. Out of a sense of delicacy Carleton never mentioned that he owned all three of these, and found them elegant and elliptical, couched in prose that had the cadence of the King James Bible, and concerned

She needed someone who might quiet the shrieking wean, who might help her resurface after she was hit with the waves of her grief.