Except today wasn’t just another ordinary bead in the strand of her life. Today, Tully was coming to Seattle for a promotional tour. It would be the first time they’d seen each other in months, and Kate couldn’t wait. She needed some girlfriend time.

She hurried through her To Do list—dropped Marah off at school, spent too long at Safeway, bought all-new makeup at Rite Aid, made it to the library in time for reading hour, picked up Johnny’s dry cleaning, got the boys down for their naps, and cleaned the house.

By two-thirty, as she pulled out of the carpool lane—again—she was exhausted.

“Aunt Tully’s coming to spend the night tonight, right, Mommy?” Marah said from the backseat. She looked tiny, wedged in as she was between the boys’ dump-truck-sized car seats.

“That’s right.”

“Are you gonna wear makeup?”

Kate couldn’t help smiling at that. She wasn’t quite sure how it had happened, but somehow she’d raised a tiny beauty queen. At ten, Marah already had more fashion sense and style sensibility than Kate ever had. She watched in amazement as her tall, slim ten-year-old daughter poured over the teen fashion magazines and memorized designer names. School shopping was a terror. If Marah didn’t find exactly what she wanted, she went ballistic. There was rarely any doubt in Kate’s mind that her daughter was judging her appearance. More often than not, she knew she was found lacking. “I will definitely wear makeup. I’ll even curl my hair, how’s that?”

“Can I wear lip gloss? Just this once? All the girls—”

“No. We’ve had this discussion, Marah. You’re too young.”

Marah crossed her arms. “I’m not a baby.”

“You’re not a teenager, either. Believe me, there will be plenty of time for all that.” She pulled the car into the garage and parked.

Marah was out of the car and into the house before Kate had time to ask her to help carry stuff in. “Thanks for the help,” she muttered, releasing her boys from the car seats. As toddlers, Lucas and William were wild separately; together they were a tornado.

For the next few hours, she did more afternoon chores: in addition to all the regular things, she arranged vases of flowers and placed them throughout the house, positioned and lit scented candles on dressers too high for the boys to reach, and thoroughly cleaned the guest room in case Tully decided she had time to say. Then, with dinner in the oven and the boys trailing along behind her, she went upstairs to get ready. As she passed Marah’s room she could hear the patter of feet that meant her daughter was pulling one outfit after another from her closet.