Tessie lay among the cushions, her face a gray blot in the gloom, but her hands were clasped in mine and I knew that she knew and read my thoughts as I read hers, for we had understood the mystery of the Hyades and the Phantom of Truth was laid.

Most minnows are small fish with cycloid scales, soft rays supporting their fins, and toothless jaws. Some possess barbels on their upper jaw, and many species develop nuptial tubercles during the breeding season.

It thus follows that if Ryuji and Noboru are two halves of one person, Ryuji's murder is a self-rape or self-killing, a suicide. (It is perhaps in this sense that every murder is a suicide.

He taught both my mother and me to shoot, taught my mother so well that she became a better shot than he was--a real deadeye.