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camped out at the hospital, and even then . . .”
    She gave herself a hard shake, blew out a breath. “That’s not where I was going. I meant Zoe reminds me of how Mrs. Hawke was. It’s that good-mother vibe Zoe has. The kind of woman who knows what to do and how to do it and doesn’t whine about getting it done, and still manages to love it and the kid. She and Jordan were tight, the way Zoe and Simon are. It was just the two of them. His father wasn’t in the picture, not as far back as I can remember, anyway.”
    â€œThat must’ve been difficult for him.”
    â€œIt would’ve been, I think, if his mother hadn’t been who she was. She’d grab a bat and join in a pickup softball game as quickly as she would whip up some cookie batter. She filled the gaps.”
    â€œYou loved her too,” Malory realized.
    â€œI did. We all did.”
    Dana sat down, sipped at her second glass of wine. “So anyway, the Hawke goes off to college, gets two part-time jobs up there to help pay his expenses. We didn’t see much of him the first year. He came back for summers, worked at Tony’s Garage. He’s a pretty decent mechanic. Palled around with Flynn and Brad when he had the chance. Four years later, he’s got his degree. He did a year and a half postgrad and was already getting some short stories published. Then he came home.”
    She let out a long breath. “Holy Jesus, we took one look at each other, and it was like bombs exploding. I thought, What the hell is this? This is my buddy Jordan. I’m not supposed to want to sink my teeth into my good buddy Jordan.”
    She laughed, drank. “Later on, he told me he’d had the same sort of reaction. Whoa, hold on, this is Flynn’s littlesister. Hands off. So we danced around those bombs and each other for a couple of months. We were either bitchy with each other or very, very polite.”
    â€œAnd then?” Malory prompted when Dana fell silent.
    â€œThen one night he dropped by to see Flynn, but Flynn was out on a date. And my parents weren’t home. I picked a fight with him. I had to do something with all that heat. The next thing you know the two of us are rolling around on the living room rug. We couldn’t get enough of each other. I’ve never had that before or since, that . . . desperation. It was incredible.
    â€œImagine our chagrin when the smoke cleared and the two of us were naked on Liz and Joe’s pretty Oriental carpet.”
    â€œHow did you handle it?”
    â€œWell, as I recall we lay there like the dead for a minute, then just stared at each other. A couple of survivors of a very intense war. Then we laughed our butts off and went at each other again.”
    She lifted her glass in a mock toast. “So. We started dating, belatedly. Jordan and Dana, Dana and Jordan. It got to be like one word, whichever way you said it.”
    Oh, God, she missed that, she realized. Missed that very intimate link. “Nobody ever made me laugh the way he could make me laugh. And he’s the only man in my life who’s ever made me cry. So, yeah, Christ, yes, I loved that son of a bitch.”
    â€œWhat happened?”
    â€œLittle things, huge things. His mother died. God, nothing’s ever been as, well, monstrous as that. Even when my dad got sick, it wasn’t as bad. Ovarian cancer, and they found it too late. The operations, the treatments, the prayers, nothing worked. She just kept slipping away. Having someone die is hard,” she said softly. “Watching them die by inches is impossible.”
    â€œI can’t imagine it.” Malory’s eyes filled with tears. “I’ve never lost anyone.”
    â€œI don’t remember losing my mother; I was too young. But I remember every day of losing Mrs. Hawke. Maybe it broke something in Jordan. I don’t know—he wouldn’t let me know. After she died, he