Caddie reached over and turned the car’s radio from the classical station Carol preferred to something raucous and nerve-jangling. Carol’s first instinct was to change it back, but she’d already won one battle with her daughter. If listening to terrible music meant an otherwise stress-free remainder of the trip, she could endure it. Maybe.

“I was supposed to go see them with Sam and Bree this weekend,” Caddie said, turning up the volume.

“See who?” asked Carol, her head beginning to throb.

“Them,” Caddie answered, nodding toward the radio. She began to sing along with the music. “ ‘I remember when you told me that you never dream in color,’ ” she warbled.

They passed a road sign—MONTEREY 25—and Carol looked at the car’s clock. They were right on time. With a little luck, she could be back in L.A. in time for dinner. As long as Ben didn’t cause any problems. But Ben always caused problems. No, she corrected herself, he didn’t cause problems, he was the problem. Ben never caused anything; he was the most passive–aggressive man she’d ever known, like a stubborn dog who pretended not to understand when you asked it to perform something as simple as sit.

“ ‘Don’t you see how blind you are?’ ” Caddie sang, loudly and badly.

For a moment, Carol thought her daughter was speaking to her. Then she saw that Caddie was looking out the window, one hand smacking forcefully against her knee. Carol noted the nails, bitten to nothing, and resisted the urge to lecture. It wasn’t her problem. Caddie wasn’t her problem. At least not for the summer.

Let Ben worry about her nails, she thought. Not that he would. Not Ben. He probably wouldn’t even notice their daughter’s nails. Carol wondered if he would even recognize Caddie if he saw her in a crowd of other teenage girls, if she wasn’t presented to him and identified, like one of his specimens.

That wasn’t fair, she told herself, at least not entirely. Ben hadn’t been the most attentive father, it was true, but he wasn’t entirely disinterested in his child. He was just, well, Ben. People as a whole didn’t particularly interest him. She didn’t know why. She’d tried to figure it out at first, when they were dating, when they were first married. She’d believed then that something terrible had happened to him to shut him off from humanity, some great trauma that, when addressed, would transform him into a loving partner.

But there was nothing. No horrible family. No childhood abuse or emotional cataclysm that might account for his behavior. Despite all of her searching, she found nothing. And so she had decided to shock him into caring with a baby. No man, she was sure, could stare into the face of his own child and not be moved to feelings of overwhelming love.

She’d even allowed him to name her, hesitating only a moment when he’d suggested Cadlina. She should have known then that she’d made a grave error in believing him capable of relating to another human being. Who, after all, named a child after a slug? But she’d allowed it, comforting herself with the fact that the obvious nickname—Caddie—was not so bad.