Nadia Diamondstein was seated three rows over and two rows forward. I could see her red hair. Nadia and I were almost related. This past summer, her grandfather had married my grandmother. In August when I visited them, Nadia was visiting her father. We often walked the beach together. And one day after a storm, we rescued a batch of hatchling turtles and took them out to sea.

The light from the window shone on Nadia’s side of the room. When she moved her head, the morning light caught in her hair the way the sun had when she turned her back to the ocean. Fringes of her hair framed her face in a halo. Whenever that halo effect happened, I wanted to stare at her until the sunlight stopped, but my heart stopped before the light did. Then there was a period during my vacation when Nadia chose not to walk with her father and me. I waited for her to catch up, and when I did, she slowed down, and I missed seeing the light in her hair. I never told Nadia how much I liked seeing the halo the sunlight made of her hair. Sometimes silence is a habit that hurts.

From The View from Saturday by E.L. Konigsburg, still one of my favorite childhood books and the last line is very poignant