Susan Hubbard

Yes, it’s possible to miss someone you’ve never met.

Light and shadow: you need both to paint a scene or tell a story. To represent three dimensions on a flat surface, you need light to form the object and shadow to give it shape.
In composing a picture or a story, you pay attention to negative and positive space. The positive space is what you want the viewer’s eye to focus on. But negative space also has substance and shape. It isn’t the absence of something; it’s a presence.
My mother’s absence in my life was in many ways a presence. My father and I were shaped by it, even in the years when we didn’t mention her name. The prospect of finding her tantalized me, yet made me anxious; it threatened to rearrange and displace everything familiar. If I found her, would I become the negative space?

One thing I’d learned: the death of a loved one changes everything for those who survive.

Sometimes the softest sounds are the most powerful ones.

“Humans are always leaving, Ari. That’s one thing I’ve learned. Life is all about people leaving.”

It would taste violet blue — the color of a twilight sky.

Mrs. McG asked me once if I was lonely, and I had no idea what to answer. I knew from books that people had friends, children had playmates. But I had my father and Dennis and Mrs. McG (and Mary Ellis Root, alas), and I had all the books I wanted. So after a few seconds I replied that no, I wasn’t lonely.

The area was popular with fishermen, manatee lovers, and vampires.

The candles flickered in the breeze from the bay. A crescent moon hung low in the sky. “A fine setting for a talk about blood and murder,” my father said.

When they lit the birthday candles and sang to me, I nearly cried — but not for reasons you might think. Standing behind the heat of the small pink candles, watching them, I was struck by how united they were, how they all, down to the mongrel dog, belonged together. For the first time in my life I did feel lonely.