Don’t spend your whole life checking whether everybody else is all right.

You are allowed to want things too.

Paige laughed sharply.

“She used to call me that.”

Chloe wrote about the job Paige wanted in another city and the painting course she had repeatedly postponed.

She thanked her for every inconvenient ride, every midnight trip for ice chips, every moment of ordinary company.

Near the bottom was a sentence I needed to hear as much as Paige did: Don’t turn my life into a test you keep failing because I am gone.

Paige read it a second time, more slowly.