She's as much of a ham as I am, Lu had thought with amusement. Maybe the apple didn't fall that far from the tree.

Of course it was at that moment that a customer recognized that Lu Lawson, who currently had a featured role in the show at the Shubert, was in their midst. Lu wasn't a star at that point, but New Haven was a theater town and the news spread throughout the store. For the next twenty minutes, Lu was surrounded by women demanding to know if the show's leading man really was that handsome in person and if the leading lady was a witch the way everyone said she was. Out of the corner of her eye Lu had seen her now forgotten daughter sulking. And after the ruckus died down, Rose had refused to choose a birthday doll.

Was that when it all started—the feeling that she hates me? Lu reached up to her face and felt a tear rolling down her cheek. What the hell is wrong with me? she thought. I don't cry! Not over something that happened a long time ago that I can't fix. And not on a matinee day. She got up and went to her makeup table to check her face in the mirror. There was no major damage, just a little smudge under one eye. She repaired it quickly; if she had to redo her makeup between shows, she wouldn't have time for her nap. She went back to her chair, took a forkful of dry chicken, and began to eat.

But the thoughts about her daughter wouldn't go away. Rose's animosity had come boiling to the surface during Mifalda's illness. Lu's mother's death three months earlier was still a raw spot that had not had time to heal—for Lu or Rose.

MIFALDA'S SICKNESS HAD started with stomach pains that she had ignored until she couldn't stand it anymore. There had been a trip to the doctor's office that everyone assumed would be routine. That was followed by a phone call from an incoherent Paulie, who was sobbing so hard, Lu could barely make out the dreaded word cancer.

The next morning she'd raced up to the hospital in New Haven to find her brothers crying in the hall outside her mother's hospital room. Inside, she found thirteen-year-old Rose putting a cold towel on Mifalda's forehead. Her daughter was saying in her clear, sweet voice, “You're going to get better, Nonna. I'll make you better.”

Lu must have made a sound, because Rose whipped around to face her. As she straightened up, Lu thought wildly, She's as tall as I am. When did that happen'? Then she said the first thing that came into her head. “It's Tuesday. Why aren't you in school?”

Her daughter's face turned red; her eyes were blazing. “I'm taking care of Nonna,” she hissed. “Go back to New York; no one needs you.”