Things in nature merely grow Yiyun Li

There is no good way to say this - when the police arrive, they inevitably preface the bad news with that sentence, as though their presence had not been ominous enough. The first time I heard the line, I knew already what was about to be conveyed. Nevertheless, I paid attention to how the news was delivered: the detective insisted that I take a   seat first.

I sat down at the dinner table, and he moved another chair to the right distance and sat down himself. No doubt he was following protocol, and yet the sentence - there is no good way to say this - struck me as both accurate and effective....

...The second time, having guessed the news about to be delivered, I did not give the sentence a moment's thought. I did not wait for the detective to ask me to sit down, either. I   indicated a chair where my husband should sit and took the other chair in the living room. My heart already began to feel that sensation for which there is no name. Call it aching, call it wrenching, call it shattering, but they are all wrong words, useless in their familiarity.