Usually it fell to Kate to smooth over any of the rough patches in the road their family traveled. She was the peacemaker, the referee, and the mediator, but nothing she said had worked. Marah had stayed angry for weeks now and it was taking a toll on Kate. She wasn’t sleeping well. It pissed her off, too, these silent treatments, because she knew Marah was manipulating her, trying to break Kate down.

“Are you excited about the banquet?” she forced herself to ask. At least it was something to say. The whole eighth grade was excited about the winter banquet, as they should be. The parents—including Kate—had expended a huge amount of effort to create a magical night for the kids.

“Whatever,” Marah said, looking out the window, obviously searching for friends in the crowd of kids outside the school. “You’re not going to chaperone, are you?”

Kate refused to be wounded by the remark. She told herself it was normal; she’d been telling herself that a lot lately. “I’m the decorations chairman. You know that. I’m hardly going to work on this event for two months and then not see our work.”

“So you’ll be there,” Marah said dully.

“Dad and I both will. But you’ll still have fun.”

“Whatever.”

Kate came to the drop-off lane and stopped. “The Mularkey family school bus is here,” she said. Behind her, the boys giggled at the familiar joke.

“That is so totally lame,” Marah said, rolling her eyes.

Kate turned to her daughter. “ ’Bye, honey. Have a nice day. Good luck on your social studies test.”

“ ’Bye,” Marah said, slamming the door.

Kate sighed and glanced in the rearview mirror. The twins were playing together in the backseat, making their plastic dinosaurs fight. “Girls,” she whispered under her breath, wondering why it was that adolescent girls simply had to be mean to their mothers. Clearly it was normal behavior; she’d spent enough time with her friends and peers to know that. So normal it was probably part of evolution. Maybe the species needed girls who thought they were grown up at thirteen for some bizarre, hidden reason.

A few minutes later she dropped the boys off at school (kissed them both goodbye—in public) and began her own day. First off was a stop at Bainbridge Bakers, where she got a latte, then she dropped off some books at the library and headed down to Safeway. By ten-thirty, she was home again, standing in her kitchen, putting the groceries away.

Just as she was closing the fridge door, she heard the familiar Girlfriend Hour theme music coming from the TV in the living room, and she followed it. She rarely watched the show all the way through—how could she, with her busy schedule?—but she always turned it on so she knew what the episodes were about. Both Johnny and Tully sometimes quizzed her.