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her in the middle of the night. No, she was mad at him for something else, and she wasn’t going to tell. That much was for sure. In the three years he was married to Anne she was always miffed and never once willing to say what about. Maybe Loraine just needed to hurt somebody’s feelings, and he was handy. He hoped it was just that and nothing more. He liked Loraine. She was one of the few people who seemed to know that he had feelings to hurt. They weren’t, he had to admit, regular and predictable like other people’s feelings; they came and went in ways that Dallas himself didn’t begin to comprehend. After he left Loraine’s house, he’d probably get sidetracked and not think of her again for a long time. The little girl’s birthday would come and go. Maybe that was why he had convinced himself it was today, knowing that when it really did come he’d be someplace else. “I guess you married the right brother,” he admitted.
    “A lot of good it did me.” She had her back to him and was staring out the tiny kitchen window above the sink as if something outside had caught her attention. “Why don’t you run along to work,” she suggested. “I’ve got a lot to do and for some reason I didn’t get much sleep last night.”
    Dallas started to leave, then noticed that Loraine was crying. When he touched her, she broke down completely. “Christ, I miss him.”
    “I know,” Dallas said weakly, guessing that maybe something was required of him but having no idea what it might be.
    “Of all the people in the world that God could havetaken, and it wouldn’t have amounted to anything. No loss.…”
    What she said was true. Dallas knew practically everyone in Mohawk, and there weren’t many that God, if there was one, wouldn’t have been smarter to take. “Like me,” he admitted, since it was something he’d thought many times since his brother’s death.
    Loraine spun around to face him, her face desperate with rage and pain. “Yes, damn it!”
    He figured there wasn’t anything to do but leave, so after muttering something like an apology, he did. But Loraine caught up to him before he could drive away. He would’ve been gone already if he hadn’t stopped to check the floor of the car and under the seat for his teeth. “I’m sorry, Dallas,” she cried through the rolled-down passenger-side window. “God, I don’t know what made me say that.”
    “Forget it,” he told her. “Besides, it was true.”
    “No,” she insisted. “I was just mad. If I were you, I’d go see Anne and make her marry me again. You’re a nice man. You just need somebody to look after you.”
    “Or five somebodies.”
    She smiled and snuffed her nose. “David worshiped you, you know. You were the only one in the family he cared anything for, really.”
    “And vice versa.”
    She looked off down the street and neither said anything for a while. “I guess I’ve got to forget him,” Loraine said finally. Then she studied Dallas through the open window. “So do you.”
    “I have.”
    She smiled. “Then why do you come around here still expecting to see him?”
    The remark took Dallas so off guard that he didn’t know what to say. At times when he visited Loraine and Dawn, his brother’s presence was so tangible he half expected to see David materialize in the kitchen doorway wanting to know who stole the sports page.
    “How would you like to do a favor for somebody who just treated you pretty rotten?”
    “Sure, if I can.…”
    Loraine ran her hands through her hair. Once a lovely, shining brown, it had lost most of its luster. “I’m going to have to go back to work pretty soon. The insurance money’s about gone. For some reason David had it in his head that twenty grand would set us up for life.”
    “It does sound like a lot.”
    “Not when you’re paying off medical bills the insurance didn’t cover.”
    Dallas said he would keep an eye out.
    “Thanks,” she said. “And I’m real sorry about