“And behind her there unraveled the last three years of her life, an expanse of wide space and skies that never rained, the velvet rolls of thunder that chased away all the light. In her mind it was always summer, that season of Biblical plagues and vicious heat, Lydia sitting on the front porch with her legs crossed and mouth stained cherry-sweet and red. Dry storms and dying brush, the sun merciless, Liam somehow unbothered even as the rest of the world grew lazy and slow around him. And in those moments she thought that if she’d understood it—the bittersweetness, the tang of regret like metal underneath her tongue—she wouldn’t have loved it at all.”