To Jack, there was nothing more powerful than a promise made over a handshake. He would have died ー literally chosen death ー before breaking his word.

Bending his head over hers, Leo murmured, "When I give you away at the altar, Bea, I want you to remember something. I'm not really giving you away. I'm merely allowing him the chance to love you as much as the rest of us do.

It's drugs, isn't it"? Tara was so innocent. She got pulled into that glamorous lifestyle with all her rich friends...all that cocaine dust floating around, she probably inhaled some by accident, and then -' 'There's no such thing as secondhand cocaine snorting, Mom.

I had learned that there were substitutes for a mother who couldn't be a mother. You could find love with other people. You could find it in places you weren't even looking. But the original wound would never heal. I would carry it with me forever, and so would Tara. That was the trick . . . accepting it, going on with your life, knowing it was part of you.

God, it was good. Comforting and stimulating at the same time. Absolute world-class pheromones. I wished I could take his jacket home with me. Not him, just the jacket.

Daisy had known the novel was silly even as she had read it, but that had not detracted one bit from her enjoyment.

The trick was forgetting about what she had lost ...and learning to go on with what she had left.