"Grief is not what the films show you. It is not a single dramatic moment. It is finding his reading glasses in the kitchen drawer six months later."

"The morning after I filed the papers, I walked into a store and bought myself a perfume for the first time in eleven years. Not one he would have approved. Not one that was subtle or safe or sensible."

"My father was not a sentimental man. He did not keep letters or photographs. But for thirty years, without fail, he wore the same fragrance — a dark woody thing that smelled like sandalwood and something ancient."

"He gave it to me on our third anniversary — a little bottle wrapped in brown paper. That was fourteen years ago. He is gone now, but the scent remains."

"For seven years, I searched for belonging in cities that never quite fit. I found it, unexpectedly, in a perfume shop."