Dear Edward

He’d convinced himself something between them was broken, when in truth the broken thing was him.

Florida smiles at the girl. “Everything ends,” she says. “That’s nothing to be sad about. What matters is what starts in that moment.”

Eddie’s the one with the talent. I’m the one with the anger.

He follows Besa up the stairs, with the sensation that he’s being followed by more ghosts than he can personally account for.

Edward thinks, Jordan should have been the one to live, not me.

She’s lived many lives, in many bodies, so her memories are oceanic—a body of water she swims regularly.

So much could be solved, she thinks, if we simply held hands with each other more often.

The white arrived when Bruce was twenty-seven, the same year Jordan was born. Bruce likes to point at his head and say to his son, Look what you did to me.

“My wife is pregnant, and her physician told her that physiologically and medically speaking, there are three different kinds of humans: men, women, and pregnant women. I think the same idea applies to you, Edward. There are grown-ups, children, and then you. You don’t feel like a kid anymore, right?”