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Back then, she had laughed all the time

Back then Before he’d walked out on her

The last time he’d seen Madelaine, she sat hunched on the end of the tattered sofa, looking so out of place in his fa sadly across one shoulder, her cheeks stained with tears

He allowed hiain, and with re shame The lies he’d told her, the words that fell like poison froering memory of her perfume—baby powder and Ivory soap

And now the ultie was hers

His life depended on the woman he’d betrayed

Chapter Five

Madelaine sat on the edge of Lina’s bed Here and there she could see patches of the pale blue Laura Ashley striped wallpaper she’d put up so o, but roups Madelaine had never heard of Thousands of tiny tack holes in the expensive paper, each one an i personality

Madelaine lay back on the bed and closed her eyes, thinking of her daughter For a second all she could bring forth in herblue eyes, a pair of fat legs waddling across the dining roorin

Did all mothers feel this way? Did all mothers keep a portrait of their babies inside their hearts, expecting grown girls to still smell like talcum powder and baby shampoo?

Ah, she’d made so many mistakes She should have told Lina the truth about her father years and years ago Even last year, when she’d seen Lina sliding doard, she should have guessed at the cause and co her any home …

It had been wonderful when it was just the two of the cookies and reading bedtime stories

Long-forgotten memories crept into her e and raising a baby alone Ies of that horrible apartment of theirs on University Avenue, with the s that didn’t open and the radiator that never worked … the rickety steps to the purple front door … the car that stalled on the corner of Fifteenth and University every hts when they both ate Raisin Bran for dinner and she hoped thethe eighteen-hour workdays and nighttiht there with her A curious- on an exhausted resident’s hip Back then, it was just the two of theainst everyone…

But the world had intruded, had coers and de of the end—when Lina had begun to grow up and ask questions and see Madelaine’s faults Maybe if Madelaine had attended public schools, had grown up with girlfriends around her, she would have kno to handle the daily trau Would never have allowed Madelaine to mix hat he called the riffraff Every day of her childhood had been spent alone, drea about friends ould never visit and excursions that would never take place She didn’t know anything about proms or mixers, and less about rebellion

She didn’t know anything about teenagers ere scared and belligerent and confused