Never shy, Antony always made a beeline for the toddler sandbox, where he immediately set about building a mountain of sand to run toy trucks into. Haley, more reserved, liked to take her walk and have a few minutes of quiet time with Anne before she joined her little girlfriends on the swings.

Anne smiled. “I like Leah too. She’s a nice girl, isn’t she?”

“She’s really nice. She showed me how to braid hair. She said when she rides in a horse show she has to braid her horse’s hair a certain way, but she knows a bunch of different ways to do it. She said different kinds of horses get their hair braided all different ways. I want to learn how to do that. Can I, Mommy?”

“I don’t know, sweetheart. We don’t have any horses to practice on.”

Haley was undaunted. “Leah said she would show me on her horse. Wendy wants to learn too. Maybe we could go watch Wendy ride again and then afterward Leah could teach us.”

“Maybe,” Anne said absently, distracted by her own thoughts of Leah Lawton—so quiet, so polite, but with such a tight grip on herself Anne thought she might just shatter at the slightest touch. She seemed almost to hold herself as if she was protecting a deep, raw wound—which, Anne supposed, she was. Not a physical wound, but an emotional one.

“Maybe?” Haley said with dramatic despair. She leaned against Anne and gave her most plaintive look, although there was a sparkle in her dark eyes. “Mommy, p-l-e-a-s-e.”

Anne chuckled at her daughter’s acting talents. “We’ll see.”

“Oh, n-o-o-o-o!” Haley wailed, though a smile tugged at the corners of her mouth.

This had been a little joke between them for a long time. When Haley had first come into her life she had told Anne that when her biological mother had said “We’ll see,” it almost always meant no.

Anne laughed, bent down, and kissed the top of her daughter’s head, breathing deep the soft scent of baby shampoo in Haley’s thick tangle of dark curls. Haley had done her hair herself that morning, catching it up in two slightly messy, uneven pigtails. She had also chosen her own outfit—a blue-and-white sundress. Always the girly girl.

“Maybe one day next week,” Anne said. “Daddy’s coming home tonight. He told me he wants to take us someplace special tomorrow.”

Haley’s face lit up with excitement. “Where? To the zoo? Are we going to the zoo?”

Anne shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s a secret.”

“I want to go to the zoo!” she said, bouncing up and down on her toes. “Antony wants to go too! Are we going to the zoo?”

“I don’t know,” Anne said again. “We’ll see.”

Haley groaned and crumpled against her.