A Spool of Blue Thread

by Anne Tyler

But still, you know how it is when you’re missing a loved one. You try to turn every stranger into the person you were hoping for.

For years, she had been in mourning for the way she had let her life slip through her fingers. Given another chance, she’d told herself, she would take more care to experience it. But lately, she was finding that she had experienced it after all and just forgotten, and now it was returning to her.