“Julia looked back at Hadassah on the bloodstained sand. A great emptiness opened within her as she looked at the still form. Gone, too, was the salt that had kept her from completely corruption.”

“Zoe slowed but didn’t stop. She kept her hands in front of her, still a judicious distance from the animal.
But close enough to smell it. Close enough to see the steam rising from its warm underbelly into the night air. Four billion years of un-Earthly evolution had shaped this aggregate of cells, this beast. She looked at it. And, amazingly, it looked at her. An impossible distance from the planet of her birth, this miracle had happened: Clay had made life. Life regarded life. First light, Zoe thought.”

“She too had lost her luck, and known death, and gone on.”

“He had the sudden urge to put his arms around her, but the look on her face said that if he made a move toward her, she would move away, and maybe she would keep moving away from him until the distance between them was too great to cross again in one lifetime.”

“She had rooms in her mind that she would not look into.”

“She too was standing in the lamp’s raw light. Her cheeks looked hollow, her lips too red, too bold.”

“How she still thought of Max every day and it was like someone had emptied her lungs of air, and she would catch at her heart, afraid she was dying.”

“Her vulnerability is open, but she’s safe within it.”

“She got her looks from her father. He's a plastic surgeon.”

“The kitchen was just as empty, even the refrigerator gone, the chairs, the table--the kitchen cabinets stood open, their bare shelves reminder her of a nursery rhyme. She cleared her throat. "What would demons," she said, "want with our microwave?”