ast night, Elizabeth and Anita had stayed up late into the night, talking. They didn't venture again into intimate territory. They simply talked, two women who'd known each other all their lives and yet had never really known each other at all. To their mutual surprise, they'd found a lot of common ground.

In the morning, after a breakfast of poached eggs and toast, they walked along the beach, talking some more. It was a glorious spring day, bursting with sunlight.

Later, while Anita napped, Elizabeth went to town and stocked up on groceries. It was late afternoon by the time she returned home. She picked up her mail, then turned onto Stormwatch Lane.

Out to sea, the first pink and lavender lights of evening were beginning to tint the sky. She parked in the gravel.

Anita was on the porch, staring out at the ocean. She wore a long, flowing white dress and a beautifully knit coral sweater. Her white hair was twisted into a single braid that fell down the middle of her back.

The light was stunning. Perfect. It drizzled over the house like sweet melted butter, softening all the edges. Anita's face was full of light and shadow right now: sad eyes, smiling mouth, furrowed brow. Her dress seemed to be spun from crushed pearls.

Elizabeth felt a flash of inspiration. "Could I paint you?"

Anita pressed a pale, veiny hand to her chest. "You want to paint my picture?"

"I don't promise that it'll be any good. I've only just started again. But if you'd be willing--"

"I could sit on that log over there by the cliff."

Elizabeth turned. Sure enough, there was a perfect log slanted along the edge of the property. In the newly setting sun, it shone with silvery light. Behind it, the gilded ocean stretched to the horizon. It was the exact place she would have chosen, although it might have taken her an hour to make up her mind. And Anita had chosen it in five seconds.

She looked at Anita. "Are you an artist?"

Anita laughed. "No, but I read that book, Girl With a Pearl Earring. The one everyone was talkin' about."

"Stay here. I'll be right back." Elizabeth raced into the house, seasoned a whole chicken and popped it into the oven alongside a few potatoes and carrots, then put the groceries away and got her painting supplies. She was outside again in less than fifteen minutes.

She set up the easel and got everything ready, then looked around for Anita.

Her stepmother was standing by the log instead of sitting on it. Her back was to Elizabeth. Her arms were crossed--that female self-protective stance Elizabeth knew so well.

The twilight sky was pure magic. Pink, purple, gold, and orange lay in layers above the sparkling silver ocean. In the distance, the gnarled trees were already black.

Anita seemed to be fading before Elizabeth's eyes, as if the colors in the sky were drawing their strength from her. She was becoming paler and paler; her hair and dress looked almost opalescent.

"Don't move!"

Elizabeth let pure instinct overtake her. She'd never moved with such speed, such purpose. Mixing colors, slashing lines, trying desperately to capture the lonely beauty of the scene in front of her. Layer upon layer of color, everything taking on a hue that was completely unique.

She painted furiously, desperately, wordlessly, until the last bits of light seeped into the waterline at the edge of the world and disappeared.

It was almost completely dark when she said, "That's it, Anita. No more for tonight."

Anita's body seemed to melt downward and become smaller. Suddenly Elizabeth realized how much she'd asked of the woman. "I'm sorry. Did it hurt to stand so still for so long?"

"I loved every moment of it."

"You must be starving. I know I am. Come on inside."

Anita glanced eagerly at the easel. "Can I see it?"

"No." Elizabeth heard the hard edge to her voice and was instantly contrite. "Sorry. I mean not yet. Is that okay?"

Anita waved her hand in the air. "Of course, honey."

Elizabeth carried the painting into the house and put it in the walk-in pantry to dry. "Dinner'll be ready in a while," she said to Anita; "go on upstairs. Take a hot bath."

"Darlin', you read my mind."

Elizabeth set the table and made the salad, then called for Anita. When there was no answer, she went upstairs and found her stepmother sitting on the end of the bed, holding a small lace-trimmed pillow. Her head was bowed forward. She was so still that for a moment Elizabeth thought she'd nodded off.

"Anita?"

Anita looked up. Her face was pale; in the dull light, her cheekbones created dark hollows in her cheeks. There were tears in her eyes.

Elizabeth sat down on the edge of the bed. "You okay?"

"I guess."

Elizabeth didn't know what to say. Grief was like that: One minute you were tripping the light fantastic; the next minute, an old blue pillow made you cry.

Anita smoothed her hand across the pillow. "Your daddy always tried to get me to take up needlepoint, but I never could master it. Such a feminine thing."

Elizabeth glanced down at the pillow. It was one of the few mementos she had of her mother. She had often tried to imagine her mother in a rocking chair, working with all that beautiful silk thread, but all she could draw up was a black-and-white image of a young woman looking into the camera.

"Your mama made this pillow," Anita said. "I can tell by her dainty stitches. That time she came into the beauty salon? She stitched the whole time Mabel cut her hair."

"I try to picture her sometimes."

Anita set the pillow down and stood up, then placed her thin hands on Elizabeth's shoulders and guided her toward the mirror that hung above the bureau.

Elizabeth stared at her own puffy reflection. Her hair was a mess, her face looked pale without makeup.

"When I first saw your mama, I thought she was the loveliest woman I'd ever seen. She and Edward looked like a pair of movie stars together." Anita pulled the hair back from Elizabeth's face. "You're the spittin' image of her."

As a girl, Elizabeth had spent hours searching through family photographs for pictures of her mother, but she'd never found more than a few.

She'd been looking in the wrong place for years, and no one had ever told her. All she'd needed to see Mama was a mirror. Now, as she looked into her own green eyes, she saw a hint of the woman she'd spent all her life missing. "Thank you, Anita," she said in a shaky voice.

"You're welcome, honey."

Jack barely slept that night.

Bleary-eyed and hungover, he padded into the bathroom and turned on the shower.

Unfortunately, the hot water couldn't wash away his regret. He'd slept with Sally again last night.

He wished he could believe it wouldn't matter; he and Birdie were separated, after all. But he knew better. This separation wasn't a license to screw around. It was a hiatus, a resting period in the midst of a long marriage. If he found out that Birdie had been unfaithful, he would kill the guy.

She'd forgiven him once, but that had been years ago, when they were different people. Back then, she'd been willing to sacrifice a huge amount of herself for their family. Though he'd hurt her, she'd been willing to believe in him again. In them.

But those days were gone. The new Birdie was a woman he couldn't predict.

She might learn about this mistake and file for divorce.

Or maybe she wouldn't care anymore. Maybe she'd drifted so far away that fidelity didn't matter.

He wiped steam off the bathroom mirror and stared at his hazy reflection. After a night of partying, the wrinkles around his eyes were more pronounced, and his skin had a sick gray tinge. It was easy to imagine himself as an old man, stooped by time and bad choices, tottering forward with a cane to steady his walk.

He'd always believed that Birdie would be beside him in those twilight years, still loving him when he had nothing to offer but a shaking hand and his heart. It had never occurred to him--not even in the past weeks--that they wouldn't always be together.

Now, suddenly, he was afraid. What if he'd finally ruined it?

He had just started shaving when the phone rang. Naked, he walked into the bedroom to answer it. "Hello?"

"Hel-lo, Dad." Jamie sighed disgustedly. "I told you he was still at home. He forgot us."

Shit. Today was the day they were going to Oregon. "I was just walking out the door."

Lame, Jack. Lame.

"Often, people leave for the airport before the plane lands," Jamie said.

"I meant to."

"He meant to," Jamie said, clearly talking to her sister. "How long until you'll be here? Maybe we should get a room and wait until it's convenient for you to pick us up."

He glanced at the clock. It was eight-forty-eight. "An hour, max. I don't know what traffic is like. Our plane doesn't leave until..."

"Eleven-forty-nine."

"Right. I'll meet you at the gate by ten."

Jamie sighed. "We'll be there, Dad."

"I'm sorry," he said. "Really."

"We know. See you in a few."

Jack hung up the phone, took two aspirin, and rushed to get dressed.

What if Birdie could tell he'd been unfaithful just by looking at him?

Damn. One screwup at a time. For now, he had to deal with the fact that he'd forgotten to meet his children at the airport.

In ten minutes, he was out the door and in a cab, heading toward Kennedy.

That gave him plenty of time to figure out what to say beyond, I'm sorry.

Maybe Stephanie would buy it, would smile prettily and say, That's okay, Dad, but not Jamie. She'd stare daggers at him and ignore him for as long as she damned well felt like it.

Once again, he needed Birdie. She'd always been the glue that held their family together. She'd guided him, gently and not so gently, toward an easy relationship with his daughters. She'd made sure that he'd apologized when he needed to and listened when it was imperative. Without her, he was on his own, and he had no idea what to say.

"You can quit being strong, you know," Anita said as they sat at the kitchen table, eating an early lunch. A few presents sat on the counter.

"What do you mean?"

"A happy birthday from your stepmother and a little gift doesn't quite cut it. Admit it, you miss your family. You've looked at the phone about fifty times today."

"I'm fine. And you said you were going to teach me how to play cribbage tonight. That's something to look forward to."

She eyed Elizabeth. "What did you normally do on your birthday?"

"You mean besides warn everyone for a week that it was coming?"

Anita nodded.

"Let's see. I usually took the day off from all volunteering projects and slept in. By the time I woke up, the house was empty. Jack and the girls always left birthday messages on the table. Once they tied balloons to the chairbacks." Elizabeth's heart did a little flip. She'd forgotten that... "Jack always made dinner for me that night. His one meal--chicken piccata. It took him two hours and two drinks to make it, and you couldn't talk to him while he was cooking. He cursed a blue streak the whole time. After dinner, he gave me a body massage and then we made love. Oh, and I got to kiss and hug the girls as much as I wanted--they weren't allowed to protest."

"It sounds wonderful."

"It was."

"You're good at it, you know."

"What?"

"Denial. I mean, if I didn't know you, I might think everything was just peachy for you."

"I made a choice. I wanted to be alone." Elizabeth's voice softened; hurt feelings flooded through the barriers she'd built. Suddenly she was drowning in sorrow; a minute ago she'd been happy. She'd buried herself in denial because she knew how much a birthday without her family would hurt. No one had even called her today.

That was the realization she'd been running from all morning. No one had called.

Elizabeth forced a smile. "I'm going to go paint now. I need to finish four more pieces before the festival."

Anita stood up from the table and unwrapped her apron. "Do you mind if I tag along? I could knit while you paint."

"I'd appreciate the company," Elizabeth answered truthfully. "I'll go change my clothes and grab my stuff."

Upstairs, she changed into a pair of baggy Levi's and a well-worn blue denim shirt. She was almost to the door when she realized that she needed a belt.

She went back to the bureau and dug through her clothes, finally finding an old leather belt with a big silver buckle. She threaded it through the loops and cinched it tight, then went back downstairs.

Anita grinned at her. "You look like one of those country-and-western singers from home."

"Daddy bought me this belt at Opryland, remember? I haven't been able to wear it in years." Smiling at that, Elizabeth gathered her supplies. It wasn't ten minutes later that she and Anita were climbing down the steps.

"I can't believe you can carry all that stuff down these horrible old stairs. I keep thinkin' I'm gonna twist my ankle and plant my wrinkled face in the sand."

Elizabeth laughed. She felt good again. The girls would call tonight. Most definitely. "The tide's out," she observed. "We can spend hours down here."

Anita picked up the knitting bag she'd dropped down from the top of the stairs. Flipping her blanket out on the sand, she sat down and started knitting. A pile of fuzzy white yarn settled in her lap like an angora bird's nest.

Elizabeth set up her easel, tacked the paper in place, and looked around for a subject. It was easy to find things to paint, but difficult to settle on just one. Her practiced eye saw a dozen opportunities: Terrible Tilly, the lighthouse in the distance, lonely and stark against the aqua-blue expanse of sea and sky... Dagger Rock, the black stone monolith that rose from the ocean in a cuff of foamy surf... a Brandt's cormorant circling the land's edge.

She settled on the ocean itself; it was definitely a watercolor day. No oils or acrylics. She needed to complete four paintings in time for the festival; there was no way she could make the deadline if she worked in oil.

Happy with that decision, she started work.

It wasn't as easy as she remembered. She started and stopped three times, unable to find the flow she needed in watercolor. Everything was so damned wet; the colors kept bleeding into one another. She wasn't controlling the paint.

"Damn it." She ripped the latest attempt off the easel and tossed it to the ground.

"It's never easy to start a thing," Anita said, barely looking up. "I guess that's what separates the dreamers from the doers."

Elizabeth sighed, unaware until that moment that she was breathing badly again. "I used to know how to do this."

"In high school, I spoke Spanish."

Elizabeth got the point. Skills came and went in life. If you wanted one back, sometimes you had to dig deep to find it. She walked out to the water and stood there, staring out. She let the colors seduce her, reveal themselves in their own way and time.

She was doing it incorrectly. Trying to impose her will on the paper. That was a level of skill she had lost. Now what she needed to do was feel. Be childlike with wonder again.

She released another breath and went back to the easel. She set everything up again. And waited.

Sea air caressed her cheeks, filled her nostrils with the scents of drying kelp and baking sand. The steady, even whooshing of the waves became music. She swayed along with it. This time, when she lifted her brush and dipped it in paint, she felt the old magic.

For the next few hours, she worked at a furious, breathless pace. Finally, she drew back and looked critically at her work.

In a palette of pale blue and rose and lavender, she'd captured the dramatic, sloping coastline and the glistening curve of sand. The distant peak of Dagger Rock was barely discernable, a dark shadow amidst a misty blue-white sky. A few strokes of red and gray formed a couple, far off in the distance, walking along the sand. But something was wrong...

"Why, Birdie, that's beautiful."

Elizabeth practically jumped out of her skin. She'd been so intent on her subject that she hadn't even heard Anita walk up. "I can't seem to get the trees right."

"You're missin' the angle. See how they lean backwards? As if the wind's been pushin' 'em for a thousand years and they've given up."

Given up.

In the face of great pressure, they'd quit trying to grow straight. Not unlike what Elizabeth had done in her marriage. She dabbed her brush in the paint and went back to work.

It felt as if only a few minutes had passed when Anita said, "Oh, lordy, it's past two o'clock. We need to get to the house. Hurry up!" She stuffed her knitting back in her bag and started toward the stairs.

Elizabeth watched her stepmother go. Anita was really huffing and puffing up those stairs. You'd think there was a prize to the winner.

She picked up her supplies, carefully held her painting with two fingers and climbed the steps behind Anita. Elizabeth was almost to the top when she smelled smoke. "Anita? Do you smell that?"

And there were voices, as if a radio were turned on high.

Elizabeth came to the top of the stairs and paused, looking around.

Balloons poked through the open windows of her house and drifted upward. Suddenly the front door banged open. Marge, Anita, and Meghann--Meghann!--crowded onto the porch, singing, "Happy Birthday."

Elizabeth almost dropped her stuff. No one had ever thrown her a surprise party before.

Meghann rushed toward her, arms outstretched. She wrapped Elizabeth in a fierce hug, whispering, "You didn't think I'd miss it, did you? Happy birthday."

Then all three of them were there, laughing and talking at once.

Elizabeth couldn't remember the last time she'd felt so special. She'd always been the one who organized everyone else's birthday parties and cooked the food and bought the presents. Even on her own birthday, she'd written detailed gift lists and made her own cake.

She saw Anita, standing over by a brand-new red barbecue.

Marge took the still-damp watercolor from her. "Oh, Birdie, this is exquisite. Is it for me?"

The compliment warmed her. "Of course."

After Marge walked away, Meghann moved closer. "Anita planned all this, you know. Even sent me a plane ticket." She smiled. "Like I couldn't afford it." She sobered. "It's not what I would have expected of her. You know, after all the Anita-the-Hun stories."

Elizabeth flinched. She'd come up with that nickname in eighth grade history class; it had sunk into Anita like a fishhook. In the past few days, it had haunted Elizabeth, shamed her. "She's not who I thought she was," Elizabeth said. "I'll be right back."

She walked across the yard.

Anita had pulled an intricately knitted lavender cardigan over her linen dress. Her hair was drawn back into a thick white coil. She was bent over, busily moving oysters from a tin bucket onto the grill. At Elizabeth's approach, she straightened. "Surprise."

"This is all your doing," Elizabeth said.

"It was nothing." Anita smiled. "Meghann and Marge are the kind of friends who'll drop anything to party. Besides, I always wanted to throw you a surprise party."

Elizabeth knew how much she'd hurt her stepmother over the years, and yet, Anita had still organized this party. It was the kind of thing Elizabeth would do for her daughters. "Thank you," she said, knowing it wasn't enough.

Anita gently smoothed the flyaway hair from Elizabeth's eyes. "You're welcome, Birdie."

Elizabeth grasped her stepmother's hand, held it. "I want us to start over."

Anita's eyes rounded. "Oh, my..."

Meghann came up beside them. She looped one arm around Elizabeth and hip-bumped her. In one hand, she held a white plastic pitcher. "Can I interest you ladies in a margarita? Don't worry, Anita, I can make you a virgin."

Anita laughed shakily, wiped her eyes. "Honey, there ain't nothin' you can do that'll make me a virgin again, but I'll sure-as-tootin' take a margarita."

After that, the party kicked into high gear. Marge set a portable stereo out on the porch and hooked it up, pointing the speakers toward the yard. Meghann brought out a huge CD holder and started playing music Elizabeth had never heard before--stuff from Foo Fighters and Pearl Jam. It was raucous and loud and fun.

They barbecued oysters on the grill and cooked clams in a coffee can filled with butter, wine, and spices. A half salmon, drenched in lemon and onion slices and butter, lay on an alder plank on the barbecue. Dungeness crabs sat in a bucket of shaved ice.

Elizabeth and Meghann carried the kitchen table out into the yard. Within minutes, they'd covered it with food--a bowl of pasta salad, ears of corn wrapped in tinfoil, and a loaf of homemade garlic bread.

Elizabeth couldn't remember when she'd had so much fun. They all danced and talked and laughed. It was like being twenty again, only better.

While the salmon was cooking, Marge turned Sister Sledge's "We Are Family" up to the edge of pain.

Laughing, Elizabeth stood at the table, arranging the silverware. She had just put the knives in a plastic glass when she heard the car drive up.

Jack turned onto stormwatch lane. "This road is still terrible." He heard the testiness in his voice and wished he'd tempered it. It wasn't enough that they were getting close to Birdie. Nooo. The girls had to choose today to give him the near silent treatment. On the flight across the country, Jamie had hardly spoken to him.

His daughters had talked--plenty--in fact. Enough so that his hangover had graduated into full-scale brain warfare. But they talked to each other. Jack's feeble and obviously uncool remarks fell down an empty well.

They were mad at him for forgetting to meet them. He could understand that. What bothered him was the nagging sense that there was more to it. That this was... normal and he hadn't realized the truth of their relationship until now.

Whenever the family had been together--mealtimes, holidays, vacations--Birdie had been there, stitching their disparate conversations together.

Hey, Jack, did you tell Jamie about...

Stephanie, does Daddy know...

Jack had always cared deeply about the big picture of his daughters' lives. He'd wanted to know what they believed in and what they wanted to be when they grew up, and what kind of women they were becoming. But he'd never really concerned himself with the minutiae of their daily lives. That had been Elizabeth's province. But it was that minutiae that fueled conversation.

Now, without Elizabeth, there was a distance between Jack and his girls. He didn't remember enough about their ordinary lives to really communicate, and he was afraid of saying the wrong thing, showing his ignorance. Today would not be a good day to screw up on something like a boyfriend's name or a major that had changed a year ago.

Such an error would make Jamie roll her eyes and say, Hel-lo, Dad. Like, get a clue.

He wasn't strong enough to be mentally body slammed by a teenager. Not today.

So he confined himself to safe topics. "We got lucky. It's a beautiful day."

"Totally," Jamie said from the backseat. "I can't believe it's not raining."

The view was breathtaking. For the two years Jack had lived here, all he'd noticed was the falling rain and gray skies. All he'd cared about was earning his way out of here, but now, he saw the grandeur and wildness of the coastline. Jagged, cliff-faced rocks, stunted trees, endless gray beach. Today's sunlight turned the sea into glittering silver.

No wonder Elizabeth loved it here. It was spectacularly wild. How was it that he'd never noticed the beauty before?

He rounded the last bend in the road and slowed down. There were a few cars parked along the side of the driveway. When he got out of the car, he noticed the music. It was some old disco song--maybe a Gloria Gaynor.

He pulled in behind a pale blue Toyota Camry and parked. "We'd better grab the stuff and hike in from here."

"You make it sound like we're at the base of Mount Rainier, Dad."

It was Jamie, of course. He was barely listening. His heart was a jackhammer trying to crack through his rib cage.

He should have called. Warned her.

The girls could have been a surprise, but he should have told her he was coming.

The girls ran on ahead. Jack followed, but couldn't work up much speed.

When they reached the yard, the first thing he noticed was the women. They were standing around a table. He barely had time to register that Anita and Meghann were here before Elizabeth turned around.

The girls ran toward her, screaming.

Jack couldn't move. He knew suddenly how it felt to return from war and see the face of the woman you loved for the first time. It hurt like hell to look at her, to be here, on the outside, looking at a life that had once been his. The thought of what he'd done last night with Sally made him physically ill.

Elizabeth was blonder, he saw, and thinner. She had a streak of yellow paint across her cheek and that tiny detail tossed him back to their first meeting.

"Dad, get over here!" Stephanie yelled, waving her hand.

Elizabeth looked up, saw him for the first time. He walked toward her, then clumsily took her in his arms. "Happy birthday, Birdie."

"Hey, Jack," she said. "It's good to see you."

There was something about the way she said his name, a softness that wounded him. When she drew back, he had trouble letting her go.

The party went on long into the night. At dusk, Marge pulled out a brown paper bag full of fireworks, and they all went down to the beach to light them.

Elizabeth stood apart from the crowd, watching her daughters and friends in the flickering red-and-gold glow of the falling sparks.

Jack was off by himself; he'd stayed that way all day. Oh, he'd mingled, been friendly, but he'd kept his distance. She had just started to go to him, when Stephanie came up beside her. "You haven't lit a single firework. And it's your day."

Elizabeth laughed. "Honestly, honey, I've never lit a firecracker." Her father had set the hook on that fear early. Girls don't play with fireworks, he'd said every Fourth of July; you'll blow your little fingers off. You let the boys handle this.

Stephanie pulled her forward, then bent down, rummaged through the sack. She withdrew a small, striped thing that was shaped like a rocket. "Just stick it in the sand and light it; then step back."

Elizabeth lit the fuse, then stumbled back so fast she tripped over a piece of driftwood and fell down. The canister rocketed into the dark sky and exploded. White sparkles rained down.

It was beautiful, as perhaps all dangerous things were.

"That's the end of the show, kids," Marge said when the sparks finally faded away.

Within a few minutes, they'd cleaned up the beach and gone up the stairs. One by one, the women got into their cars and drove away, including Anita and Meghann who'd decided to spend the night at the Inn Between in Echo Beach.

Elizabeth hugged everyone good-bye and watched them leave. Finally, she was in her darkened yard with only her family around her.

"I'm exhausted," Stephanie said. "We're on East Coast time, don't forget." She looped an arm around Elizabeth's shoulder. Together, the four of them went into the house.

She led the girls to the guest bedroom. It smelled like Anita, of talcum powder and lavender sachets.

Jamie plopped down on the bed. Stephanie lay down beside her.

"The party meant the world to me," Elizabeth said. "Thanks."

"We missed you," Jamie said simply, kicking off her shoes. She pulled off her jeans and crawled into bed.

Stephanie went down the hall. When she came back, she was wearing a baggy flannel nightgown and her face was pink and shiny. She kissed Elizabeth on her way past, then crawled into bed beside her sister.

Elizabeth wasn't ready to leave yet, to face Jack. "I want to hear about your new boyfriend, Jamie."

"That's it," Stephanie said, giggling. "If she's going to start blabbing about jazz-man with the oh-so-cool eyes, I'm going to sleep. G'night, Mom." She rolled onto her side.

Elizabeth sat down on the floor, leaning against the wall. "Tell me," she said.

Jamie pushed the covers aside and slid down to the floor beside her. "How did you know Dad was the one?"

Elizabeth tilted her head back. She stared up at the white, peaked ceiling where a lonely, rarely used fan collected dust. "The first kiss pretty much cinched the deal." She remembered how it had felt to be swept away, out of control. She would have given up everything to be with him.

In so many ways, she had.

"When your dad kissed me the first time, I cried."

"Why?"

"I guess that's what you do when you're falling and there's no way to land safely. Love's dangerous territory."

Jamie rested her head on Elizabeth's shoulder. "I think I'm in love with Michael. It scares me."

"Then you're growing up, kiddo."

"I think I'm afraid because of Grandad. I never knew that one minute you could be drinking eggnog and opening presents, and the next minute be in some horribly decorated room, picking out a box, and pretending that wood grain and brass accents matter."

Elizabeth put an arm around Jamie and pulled her close. For a long time, she said nothing, just stroked her daughter's hair the way she used to. "Your grandad wouldn't want you to be afraid. He never was."

"That's what I tell myself all the time. But there's a hole in me now."

"I know, honey. But it'll get easier. I promise. You'll always miss him, but after a while, the missing will be more of an ache, not so sharp a wound."

"He wanted me to swim in the Olympics. That's all he talked about at Christmas. And I can't even beat some girl from UVa."

"He didn't care about the Olympics. All he cared about was you, Jaybird. He wanted you to be happy. It'd break his heart if he thought you quit swimming because of him."

Jamie looked at her. "Can I tell you a secret?"

"Always."

"I don't really want to quit swimming. I just wanted Dad's attention. Not that I got it."

"He's a little crazy right now. Be patient with him. It's a big deal to have a dream come true in the middle of your life."

"I know. I just want things to be easier, I guess."

"Life isn't supposed to be easy, Jamie. Who cares if you discover that you'll never swim the three hundred as fast as Hannah Tournilae? What matters is knowing you tried."

"So you'd still be proud of me if I stayed on the swim team but never won a race?"

"You're fishing for compliments now."

"What if I flunked out?"

"Are you close to flunking out?"

Jamie grinned. "Actually, no. Michael's really helped me out. I just wanted to check the parameters of your goodwill while you're all gooey."

Quicksilver Jamie. Her moods were like the coast's weather; if you didn't like it, stick around for ten seconds. "You're a good egg, Jamie. Now, get to bed."

Jamie gave her a kiss on the cheek, then climbed up into bed, snuggling up beside her sister. "G'night, Mom. I love you."

"I love you, too."

Elizabeth stood up and flicked off the light, then went back downstairs.

Jack had built a fire. It crackled loudly and sent spiraling, dancing gold light across the rug. He looked acutely uncomfortable, like a big man trying to negotiate his way through a tea party.

She sat down on the sofa, close but not too close.

For a long time, neither spoke. Finally she said, "I used to remind you guys endlessly about my birthday."

"We know." He laughed, then seemed to relax, as if he'd been afraid of what she'd say.

"I always thought you'd forget, and I was so afraid of how I'd feel if that happened. Why did I do that, Jack? Why did I assume I was so unimportant?"

He faced her. There was a sadness in his eyes that she hadn't often seen. "Because I would have forgotten. Not every year, not even most years, but at some point, it would have happened. Not because I didn't care, but because I never had to think for myself. You always did it for me. You were my backbone; you kept me standing." He sighed. "And I took you for granted."

Elizabeth knew he wouldn't have thought that--let alone said it--a few months ago. "I guess we're both learning a few things about ourselves lately."

"I'm not the father I thought I was." He looked surprised by the admission, as if he hadn't meant to voice it. "Without you, the girls and I have nothing to talk about. They think I'm an idiot."

This was a new side to Jack, vulnerable. It changed him somehow, shifted the balance of power between them. She felt as if they were friends, talking about their kids. "They're nineteen and twenty, Jack; they think anyone who remembers Kennedy should be in a nursing home. I used to treat Anita the same way."

"Jamie rolls her eyes at you, too?"

"Of course. Usually right before she says, 'Hel-lo Mom, could you please get real?' And Stephanie gives me that wounded deer-eye blink and shuts up until she gets her way. They've been perfecting the act since sixth grade. They could take it on the road."

"How do you handle it?"

"On a good day, I ignore them. On a bad day, I get my feelings hurt. Fortunately, there are more good days than bad." She saw his frown and asked, "What is it, Jack?"

Minutes ticked past before he answered. "We're going to have to tell them, aren't we?"

She almost touched him then, but something held her back. Fear, maybe. If she touched him now, when her heart was swollen and tender, it might begin again, and she wasn't ready for that. This journey of hers wasn't finished yet. "Yes."

"They'll blame me, you know."

"I'll tell them it was my choice."

"It won't matter."

"They're practically grown-up, Jack. They'll understand. And we won't mention divorce, just separation."

He smiled, but it was bleak and bitter. "We can call it anything we want. Hell, call it a vacation, but they're not stupid. I'll lose them."

Suddenly she was afraid, too. "Maybe we won't have to tell them. Maybe they won't have noticed that anything's wrong between us."

"Birdie," he said, smiling sadly at her. "My dreamer."

She wasn't quite sure why, but the way he said it made her want to cry. "We haven't made a decision about the future, Jack. We're just taking a break. That's all. There's still a chance for us," she said fiercely.

He touched her face gently, as if she were spun from glass that he'd broken long ago. "I want to believe that."

"Me, too."