Park turned it over and recognized her scratchy handwriting. It filled his head with song lyrics.

Park felt like he should say something to her. He always felt like he should say something to her, even if it was just hello or excuse me.

And when she handed it back to him the next morning, she always acted as if she were handing him something fragile. Something precious. You wouldn’t even know that she touched the comics except for the smell.

Eleanor didn’t even know all this existed. She hadn’t realized Omaha could be such a nice place to live. (In her head, this was Park’s doing, too. The world rebuilt itself into a better place around him.)

drabber

He’d stopped trying to bring her back. She only came back when she felt like it, anyway, in dreams and lies and broken-down déjà vu.

Like she was more comfortable out of her shirt than in it. Like she was happy inside out.

Like the only part of her head fit for praying.)

Sometimes it seemed like she would never be able to give Park anything like what he’d given her. It was like he dumped all this treasure on her every morning without even thinking about it, without any sense of what it was worth.