That was when Hibbard had handed her the letter.

Dear Phoebe,

As you know, I regard you as my only failure. For years, you’ve publicly humiliated me by running around with all those fags and fairies, but I’m not going to let you defy me any longer. For once in your life you’re going to do what I tell you. Maybe this experience will finally teach you something about responsibility and discipline.

The game of football makes men out of boys. Let’s see if it can make a woman out of you.

Don’t fuck this up, too.

Bert

She had read the note through three times while the lawyer watched, and each time the lump in her throat had grown larger. Even from the grave, Bert was determined to control her. By removing her from Manhattan, he thought he could reshape her into the person he wanted her to be. Her father had always loved to gamble, and he had apparently decided she couldn’t do much damage to his precious team in a few months. Now he would finally have exactly what he wanted. Reed would end up with the Stars, while she danced to her father’s tune.

She wished she could force herself to believe that his motivations were based on love and concern. Then she might have been able to forgive him. But she understood too well that Bert knew nothing of love, only of power.

So she wandered the halls of her father’s house that night saying prayers for the souls of dead animals and unloved little girls, while she counted the hours until she could run away from this place where she’d known so much unhappiness.

Peg Kowalski, who had been Bert’s housekeeper for the last eight years, had left a single light burning in the large family room that stretched across the back of the house. Phoebe walked over to the windows that looked out on the grounds and tried to find the old maple that had been her favorite hiding place when she was a child.

Generally she tried to avoid thinking about her childhood, but tonight, as she stared into the darkness, that time didn’t seem so long ago. She could feel herself being pulled back into the past, to that old maple tree and the dreaded sound of a bully’s voice. . . .

“There you are, Flea Belly. Come on down. I’ve got a present for you.”

Phoebe’s stomach did a flip-flop at the loud intrusion of her cousin Reed’s voice. She looked down to see him standing beneath the tree that was her haven during those few times when she was at home. She was supposed to leave for summer camp the next morning, and she had so far managed to avoid being caught alone with him, but today she had let down her guard. Instead of staying in the kitchen with the cook or helping Addie clean the bath-rooms, she had escaped to the solitude of the woods.

“1 don’t want any present,” she said.