“Karen couldn't understand how these encounters had marked him, and she had always believed that a person without trauma was dangerous in some way, untested. Also bizarre: in all of his stories, Dan ended up succeeding.”

“I got up to go back to the kitchen and put the cake in the oven. Probably it would not go well for the cake, or for whoever tried to eat the cake. It did not look as though the cake was going to turn out particularly nice, having been made for confusing reasons and lacking certain essential ingredients. But what else was there to do? Wasn't a terrible cake better than some terrible cake batter?”

“There had been times when I thought I might be with you indefinitely, something approaching an entire life. But then when there was only a finite amount of time, a thing we could both see the limit of, I wasn't so sure.”

“Karen couldn't understand how these encounters had marked him, and she had always believed that a person without trauma was dangerous in some way, untested. Also bizarre: in all of his stories, Dan ended up succeeding.”

“There was nothing else I could do but say sorry myself. His apology had left a residue in me, a residue on my thinking, and continuing on in this house without saying it would be entirely awkward. It would turn the small space toxic. So I said it, though I tried to lessen the potency of the apology by mumbling.”

“It seemed as though, being the only two people in this small, closed-in space, we couldn't help but have a relationship, and if we couldn't help but have a relationship, I felt that it was important to be upset now so that he would not shift the blame to me in the future.”

“The past was just a place where uncontrolled freaks you had never consciously decided to include in your life entered it anyway and staggered around, breaking things.”

“She was truly happy for the first time in her life, and it felt just like living in a small room painted all white, with windows looking out onto impenetrable forest.”

“I find it increasingly difficult to speak of my feelings at will.”

“I didn't know what to say. I knew I had a big choice to make. I could let it all go and try to love him, try to trust him, try to make something lasting and good. He obviously had strong feelings for me or about me. And he wasn't being so bad right now. We could build something sturdy, beautiful. Or I could try to make a dash for the door by crawling under the dining room table.There was a good chance that he would kill me later either way.”

“But I had no idea who this person might be, or who any of the people might be who sat at that table and watched me at the door and claimed to have feelings not exactly for me, but at me.”