“How was work?” he asked, crawling onto a stool beside the breakfast bar that had, like the picture windows in the living room, been something of an architectural afterthought.

Shay groaned and rolled her eyes. “I spent most of it being fitted for costumes.”

Hank was swinging his bare feet back and forth and there was an angry-looking mosquito bite on his right knee. “Costumes? What do you need costumes for? Halloween?”

Shay brought a dozen eggs, a pound of bacon and other miscellaneous items from the grocery bag. “Something similar, I’m afraid,” she said ruefully. “I’m going to be doing four commercials.”

Hank’s feet stopped swinging and his brown eyes grew very wide. “You mean the kind of commercials Mr. Reese does? On TV?”

“Of course, on TV,” Shay answered somewhat shortly. “Mr. and Mrs. Reese are going to be away, so I’ll have to take Mr. Reese’s place.”

“Wow,” Hank crowed, drawing the word out, his eyes shining with admiration. “Everybody will see you and know you’re my mom! I betcha I could get a quarter for your autograph!”

A feeling of sadness washed over Shay; she recalled how people had waited for hours to ask Rosamond for her autograph. She had signed with a loopy flourish, Rosamond had, so friendly, so full of life, so certain of her place in a bright constellation of stars. Did that same vibrant woman exist somewhere inside the Rosamond of today?

“You’re thinking about your mom, aren’t you?” Hank wanted to know.

“Yes.”

“Sally’s mother says you should write a book about Rosamond. If you did, we’d be rich.”

Shay took a casserole prepared on one of her marathon cooking days from the small chest freezer in one corner of the kitchen and slid it into the oven. She’d been approached with the idea of a book before, and she hated it. Telling Rosamond’s most intimate secrets to the world would be a betrayal of sorts, a form of exploitation, and besides, she was no writer. “Scratch that plan, tiger,” she said tightly. “There isn’t going to be a book and we’re not going to be rich.”

“Uncle Garrett is rich.”

“Uncle Garrett is the son of a world-famous country and western singer and a successful businessman in his own right,” Shay pointed out.

“Rosamond was famous. How come you’re not rich?”

“Because I’m not. Set the table, please.”

“Sally’s mother says she had a whole lot of husbands. Which one was your dad, Mom? You never talk about your dad.”

Shay made a production of washing her hands at the sink, keeping her back to Hank. How could she explain that her father had never been Rosamond’s husband at all, that he’d been the proverbial boy back home, left behind when stardom beckoned? “I didn’t know my father,” she said over the sound of running water. In point of fact, she didn’t even know his name.

Hank was busily setting out plates and silverware and plastic tumblers. “I guess we’re alike that way, huh, Mom?”