Carrie let her mind drift back to Bobby Manning, the mystery daddy she'd fantasized about until she was old enough to understand how much her mother wished she wouldn't.

“He loved you” was Rose's standard answer when Carrie asked about him. But one time Rose had slipped and said, “Bobby and my mother were two of a kind.” Since they'd both been show business legends, there was nothing particularly startling about the statement—it was the bitterness in her mother's sweet voice that had made a lasting impression on little Carrie.

One of the many factors that made Carrie 's life so confusing—dysfunctional, if you listened to Zoe—was that she came from theatrical royalty. On both sides. Carrie's grandmother—Rose's mother—was Lu Lawson, one of the biggest stars of Broadway musical comedies in the fifties and the sixties. Carrie's father, the fabulous Bobby Manning, had written six blockbuster musicals in the sixties and early seventies without having a single flop. But it wasn't just his incredible track record that had made him such a phenomenon. Most musicals of that day were written by a team of two: one person writing the book—the actual play—and the lyrics, and the other composing the music. Bobby didn't have a partner; he wrote the entire show, music and words, himself. In interviews he said he did it that way because it cut down on the arguments. Most people in the profession said he did it that way because he was a genius. One of those who had sung his praises the loudest back in those glory years was the woman who had given him his start, his mother-in-law, Lu Lawson. But then, she'd had reason to praise Bobby. She'd starred in Bobby's first show, called The Lady, and she'd won a Tony for her work. Bobby had won that year too.

Playbill, the program given out at theaters before a performance, had run twin articles about Bobby and Lu when The Lady swept the awards. In his article Bobby admitted that he'd created the musical for Lu before he'd ever met her, when he was a nobody who had no right to even dream that the greatest woman on the American stage would take a chance on him. He'd added—charmingly—that he still couldn't believe his luck. In the picture accompanying the story he'd been clutching his Tony, wide-eyed with amazement, which made his humility even more endearing. In her companion article, Lu said she was the lucky one. This expression of mutual admiration had taken place two months after Bobby had married Lu's daughter, Rose. That event hadn't gotten any play in the press because the bride had insisted on keeping it low-profile. And besides, the big news was the team of Bobby Manning and Lu Lawson. The world of show business had its priorities.