“After church on the Sunday after Thanksgiving, my family would go chop down our Christmas tree. Once it was home and placed in its stand, Mom and I would painstakingly decorate our tree. It took hours to place the tinsel, string the lights, find the perfect spot for my favorite macaroni and felt ornaments from kindergarten.”

“It's funny what memory does, isn't it? My favorite holiday tradition might not have happened more than once or twice. But because it is such a good memory, so encapsulating of everything I love about the holidays, in my mind it happened every year. Without fail.”

“After church on the Sunday after Thanksgiving, my family would go chop down our Christmas tree. Once it was home and placed in its stand, Mom and I would painstakingly decorate our tree. It took hours to place the tinsel, string the lights, find the perfect spot for my favorite macaroni and felt ornaments from kindergarten.”

“You’re not broken, Dylan. I know you’re not.”

“Sometimes, maybe we don’t know exactly what we have until someone shows us.”

“It’s about his family. It will always be about his family. And himself. Deep in your heart you know that and you’re trying to convince yourself that you can save him. And you can’t. There’s no saving Dylan Daniels.”

“She was saying words she didn’t totally believe yet. And maybe I was, too. But I wanted them to be true. For the first and only time in my life, I wanted to belong to someone and have that person belong to me.”