The Keeper of Happy Endings

by Barbara Davis

She had always leaned toward the introverted end of the spectrum,

There is a grief worse than death. It is the grief of a life half-lived.

Adding beauty to the world isn’t vanity, chérie. It’s a calling.”

“In France we say, tu me manques. It means ‘you are missing from me.’ Not I miss you—the way Americans say it—but you are missing from me. The part of you that is a part of me . . . is gone.