“Just a week? Are you kidding?”

Marah glanced nervously at Tully. “I can take my homework and do it at night and on the plane, but if I get discovered, I wouldn’t need to finish high school anyway. I’d have tutors.”

“How many of the kids in your modeling class were invited to attend?” Johnny asked, sounding calm and reasonable.

“Everyone,” Marah answered.

“Everyone?” Kate got to her feet. “Everyone? That’s not anything special, then, it’s some racket to wring money out of us. You actually think—”

“Kate,” Johnny said, giving her The Look.

She yanked hard on her temper, took a deep breath. “I didn’t mean that, Marah. I just . . . you can’t miss a week of school, and three thousand dollars is a lot of money.”

“I’ll pay it,” Tully said.

Kate had never wanted to hit her best friend more. “She can’t miss school.”

“I could—”

Kate held up a hand for silence. “Don’t say more,” she said to Tully.

Marah burst into tears. “See?” she yelled at Tully. “She thinks I’m a baby and she won’t let me do anything.”

Johnny got to his feet. “Marah, come on, you’re thirteen years old.”

“Brooke Shields and Kate Moss were millionaires by fourteen because their mothers loved them, right, Tully?” She wiped her eyes and looked at Johnny. “Please, Daddy?”

He shook his head. “I’m sorry, honey.”

Marah spun on her heel and ran upstairs; all the way up, until she slammed her bedroom door, they could hear her crying.

“I’ll go talk to her,” Johnny said, sighing as he headed for the stairs.

Kate turned to her best friend. “Are you insane?”

“It’s a modeling school, not a crack house.”

“Damn it, Tully, she doesn’t need to be in that screwed-up world. I’ve told you that before. It’s dangerous.”

“I’ll help her through it. I’ll go with her.”

Kate was so mad she could hardly breathe. Once again Tully had made Kate look bad in front of Marah, and frankly, she didn’t need any help screwing up her relationship with her daughter. “You’re not her mother. I am. You can whoop it up with her and have a blast and live like the world is your Never-Never Land. It’s my job to keep her safe.”

“Safe isn’t everything,” Tully said. “Sometimes you have to take a risk. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”

“Tully, you don’t know what in the hell you’re talking about. My thirteen-year-old daughter is not going to New York City on some scam of a modeling trip, and you are certainly not going to chaperone her. The subject is closed.”

“Fine,” Tully said. “I was just trying to help.”