The Usual Rules Memory and the Past Quotes

I'm maybe twelve years old at the time. He's sixteen, and there's sure to be other stuff he'd rather be doing with his Saturdays, but he signs the permission slip like he's a grown-up, in cursive. Rides the bus with me to the park every Saturday and sits on the bleachers through all my games. After a while, I've got a few hookups with this other kid's dad, where I could probably have got there without him, but he still came to every game just to watch. When I got a hit, I could always hear him cheering like a maniac. (24.40)

It was starting to be Christmas. If this was an ordinary year, they'd be making plans to take a trip out to Connecticut to cut down their tree. You could buy one right on the street near their apartment, but Josh liked tromping through the woods in the snow and cutting it down with an ax. On their way home with the tree on the roof of their car, they always stopped at a diner that served the best macaroni and cheese. (28.1)

Hearing Kate's voice after all that time gave Wendy a dull, empty feeling, like walking past a house you used to live in a long time ago, and they've changed the paint and the stone lion that used to be out front is gone. She thought about the old days, not just before September, but before Josh and Louie, too, all those nights when she and her mother and Kate would curl up on the couch together watching Shirley Temple movies or old musicals and eating popcorn. (28.34)