Mom...a little preview of "A Student of Weather".

"Do you think," she asks so seriously that everyone looks at her, "do you think Maria will ever be happy again?"
"You mean as happy as she was before her lover died?"
Lover again, and she ducks her head. "Yes," rubbing her fingertip on the tabletop. "After the book ends."
"No," he says.
"No?"
"No. She'll have moments of happiness, but she'll never have sustained happiness."
"Oh."
And Norma Joyce sees them, moments of happiness like pearls lost in the corners of a dark room.
(p.71, Elizabeth Hay)