““Perdu saw Ida’s pain flickering in her eyes, saw that the red-haired woman was struggling to embrace a new future that felt even now like a second choice. She had been abandoned, or had left before she was rejected. The presence of the person who had been her polestar, and for whom she’d presumably forsworn many things, lingered over her smile like a veil. All of us preserve time. We preserve the old versions of the people who have left us. And under our skin, under the layer of wrinkles and experience and laughter, we, too, are old versions of ourselves. Directly below the surface, we are our former selves: the former child, the former lover, the former daughter. Ida was not looking for comfort on these rivers; she was looking for herself,””
