But a great deal of grief, in a certain kind of person, comes out as anger at a world that has the nerve to keep running, as a fierce brittle competence, as rules taped inside cabinets.

Enid had loved Albert for fifty-one years and she did not have anywhere to put the loving now that he was gone, so it had soured into a kind of armored efficiency, a woman holding herself together by holding everything else in a very tight grip.

The two cups at the coffee pot every morning told the truth her sharpness hid.

So did the chair no one could sit in.