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He said, ‘You talk a lot don’t you?’

She thought about this, her fingers combing out the ends of her hair while she watched two teenage boys selling cigars and football shirts to tourists in the cobbled square. It was not that easy to convey to him, a man much older than she was, that the world …

But I did not grow in the ways that he or I had expected. I don’t believe I grew at all. I changed—radically. I transformed. I did not swing from one side of a pendulum to the other; I removed the pivot. This could not have been a total surprise. As every Carbon document would remind you in the foo…

Not a day went by at Carbon when I wouldn’t have a fleeting thought about how I had achieved a childhood dream of mine. Mom’s and Dad’s tongues were sharper than knives, and often I felt like their honing steel, but their hearts were—and have always been—softer than tofu: they put everything into g…

Looking back at Josh, I knew if I wanted the freedom to do my own thing, I would have to give him up—and give up Boone, and, in a sense, my parents. I would have to give up all the gifts they continued to offer me because a gift weighed down by the imposition of gratitude becomes an expectation; ov…

He fell silent. So did I. I heard the crunch of fallen leaves and the happiest barks of unleashed dogs in a nearby dog run. Slowly, quietly, Josh asked, “You would give up hundreds of millions of dollars for the freedom to do your own thing?”

I looked across the street at a neighborhood deli and…