" She knew why she had Gerry on her mind, why she was spotting his likeness in the faces of strange little boys. They'd been close once, the pair of them, but things had changed when he was seventeen. He'd come to stay with Laurel in London on his way up to Cambridge (a full scholarship, as Laurel told everyone she knew, sometimes those she didn't), and they'd had fun- they always did. A daytime session of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and then dinner from the curry house down the road. Later, riding a delectable tikka masala high, the two of them had climbed out through the bathroom window, dragging pillows and a blanket after them, and shared a joint on Laurel's roof.
The night was especially clear- stars, more stars than usual, surely?- and down on the street, the distant easy warmth of other people's revelry. Smoking made Gerry unusually garrulous, which was fine with Laurel because it made her wondrous. He'd been trying to explain the origins of everything, pointing to star clusters and galaxies and making explosion gestures with his delicate, febrile hands, and Laurel had been squinting and making the stars blur and bend, letting his words run together like water. She'd been lost in a current of nebulas and penumbras and supernovas and hadn't realized his monologue was ended until she heard him say, "Lol," in that pointed way people have when they've already said the word more than once. "

― Kate Morton , The Secret Keeper