Redhead by the Side of the Road

by Anne Tyler

It was her speech to the children that had won him. “A roomful of broken hearts”! He liked that phrase.

Now that it was yours you were noticing things wrong with it, like squeaky brakes or a scratch in the paint or, I don’t know, and it didn’t matter anymore.”

“Well,” Lorna said steadily, “I am the bicycle you lost in the park the summer you turned twelve.”

“Sometimes,” she said musingly, “you can think back on your life and almost believe it was laid out for you in advance, like this plain clear path you were destined to take even if it looked like nothing but brambles and

The only place I went wrong, he writes, was expecting things to be perfect.

“I’m a roomful of broken hearts,” he tells her.