“Your ma's dating?" Tim looks shocked. "I thought she pretty much confined herself to a vibrator and the shower nozzle since your dad screwed her over.”

“There’s an opening at Mom’s campaign,” I say. “She needs all the help she can getnow that she’s totally distracted by Clay Tucker.”“Who the hell’s Clay Tucker?”“The…” Nan lowers her voice, even though all she says is: “…younger manSamantha’s mother’s dating.”“Your ma’s dating?” Tim looks shocked. “I thought she pretty much confined herselfto a vibrator and the shower nozzle since your dad screwed her over.”

“But Ma, I have the power to save her!"-TIM”

“They'd had fun, for sure. They laughed and enjoyed being together. But if she was painfully honest with herself, something was missing. Something in the way Tim looked at her. She remembered her mom's word. "I saw the way he looked at you...he adores you." Maybe that was it. Tim looked at her on a surface level. He smiled and seemed happy to see her. But When Cody looked at her, there were no layers left, nothing her didn't reveal, nothing he couldn't see. He didn't really look at her so much as he looked into her. To the deepest, most real places in her heart and soul.”

“The pretty nurse had just injected her with something that totally rocked, and if she wanted to think about boinking a bronzed, tattooed, impossibly handsome doctor who was so far out of her league she need a telescope to see him, then screw it. Screw him. Over and over.”

“Looking at her, I thought again how beautiful she was - even in jeans and a T-shirt, no makeup, she was breathtaking. So much so that it was hard to believe she could ever have looked at herself and seen anything else.”