Long after Marah had run into the house, Kate was still sitting in the car, staring after her daughter, wondering if the modeling class was a good idea. That was the sly, ruinous thing about motherhood, the thing that twisted your insides with guilt and made you change your mind and lower your standards: giving in was so damned easy.

It wasn’t that she didn’t want Marah to take the classes, precisely. It was that she didn’t want Marah on that difficult road so young. Rejections, corruption, beauty that went no deeper than the skin, drugs, and anorexia. All that lay beneath the surface of the modeling world. Self-esteem and body image were too fragile in the teen years. God knew a girl could fall off the track even without the burden of constant beauty-based rejection.

In short, Kate wasn’t afraid her gorgeous daughter wouldn’t make it in the world of runways and taped-on clothing. Rather, she was afraid she would, and then her childhood would be lost.

Finally, she left the car and went inside, muttering, “I should have held firm.”

The mother’s lament. She was trying to figure out how to backtrack (impossible now) when the phone rang. Kate didn’t even bother answering. In these last few weeks of summer, she’d learned one true thing: teenage girls lived on the phone.

“Mom! It’s Grandma for you,” Marah screamed down the stairs. “But don’t take too long. Gabe is gonna call me.”

She picked up the phone and heard the exhalation of smoke on the other end. Smiling, she ignored the groceries and plopped onto the couch, curling up under an afghan that still smelled like her mother. “Hey, Mom.”

“You sound terrible.”

“You can tell that from my breathing?”

“You have a teenage daughter, don’t you?”

“Believe me, I was never this bad.”

Mom laughed; it was a horsey, hacking sound. “I guess you don’t remember all the times you told me to butt out of your life and then slammed the door in my face.”

The memory was vague but not impossible to recall. “I’m sorry, Mom.”

There was a pause. Then Mom said, “Thirty years.”

“Thirty years what?”

“That’s how long before you’ll get an apology, too, but you know what’s great?”

Kate groaned. “That I might not live that long?”

“That you’ll know she’s sorry long before she does.” Mom laughed. “And when she needs you to babysit, she’ll really love you.”

Kate knocked on Marah’s door, heard a muffled, “Come in.”

She went inside. Trying to ignore the clothes and books and junk scattered everywhere, she picked her way to the white four-poster bed, where Marah sat, knees drawn up, talking on the phone. “Could I talk to you for a minute?”

Marah rolled her eyes. “I gotta go, Gabe. My mom wants to talk to me. Later.” To Kate, she said, “What?”