Kate wanted nothing more than to seize the instant’s possibility and pull Marah into her arms for a hug, to hang on to her little girl for just a moment and say, I love you, but she didn’t dare. Motherhood at times like this—most times—was about the steel in your spine, not the bend. “Maybe next time you’ll think about the consequences of an action.”

“Someday I’ll be a famous actress and I’ll tell the TV that you were totally no help at all. None. I’ll give all the credit to Aunt Tully, who believes in me.” She got out of the car and started walking.

Kate followed, fell into step beside her. “I believe in you.”

Marah snorted. “Ha. You never let me do anything, but as soon as I can I’m moving in with Tully.”

“When hell freezes over,” she muttered under her breath. Thankfully, she and her daughter had no more opportunity to speak. When they stepped into the school, the principal was waiting for them.

The summer before Marah started high school was hands down the worst summer of Kate’s life. A thirteen-year-old daughter in middle school had been bad; in retrospect, though, it looked a hell of a lot better from a distance. A fourteen-year-old girl getting ready for high school was worse.

It didn’t help that for the last year Johnny had been working sixty hours a week, either.

“You are not going to wear jeans that show the crack of your butt to school,” Kate said, striving to keep her voice even. In her busy end-of-the-summer schedule, she’d budgeted four hours to buy Marah’s school clothes. They’d been in the mall two hours already and the only thing in their arms was hostility.

“Everyone is wearing these jeans at the high school.”

“Everyone except you, then.” Kate pressed a pair of fingertips to her throbbing temples. She was vaguely aware of the boys running through the store like banshees, but she let that go for now. If she was lucky, maybe security would come and lock her up for failing to control her children. Right now a little solitary confinement sounded heavenly.

Marah threw the jeans on a rounder and stomped off.

“Do you even know how to walk away anymore?” Kate muttered, following her daughter.

By the time they were finished, Kate felt like Russell Crowe in Gladiator: beaten, bloodied, but alive. No one was happy. The boys were whining over the Lord of the Rings action figures she’d denied them, Marah was fuming over the jeans she hadn’t gotten and the practically see-through blouse that had also gotten away, and Kate was angry that school shopping could so drain her energy. The only good news was that she’d drawn her line in the sand and defended it. Kate hadn’t completely won the day, but neither had Marah.