The force of Rose's fury shocked Lu. “You're just a child. You can't…” she started to say, but her daughter cut her off.

“Yes, I can! You don't know what I can do. You don't know me!” She was terrified, that much was clear, and she was lashing out.

“Rose, you can't stay here,” Lu said gently. “I'll get Paulie to take you home—”

“I won't leave. You can't make me.”

The words I'm your mother hovered in the air. But Lu couldn't say them because that would be a lie.

“Go back to New York,” Rose repeated, “and leave us alone.”

They stood facing each other until the silence was broken by the sound of Mifalda trying to sit up in her bed. They both rushed to her side.

“Rose, go to the nurse and tell her I need another blanket,” Mifalda said. Her voice was hoarse and so soft that Lu could barely hear it. Rose didn't want to leave, but Mifalda said, “I'm cold, sweetheart.” With a glare at Lu, the girl left her mother and her grandmother alone.

Mifalda beckoned to Lu to come closer. “Don't send Rose away,” she said.

She can stay today, Mama, but tomorrow …” A hand so hot it burned grabbed hers.

“Let her come every day. It won't be for long. When I'm gone, she's going to need to think she helped.”

“Mama, she's too young to help, and she should face that Lu started to say, but the burning hot hand tightened its grip.

“You have to be gentle with her,” Mifalda said. “Rose is not strong like you and me. She has our blood—the wildness—but she has the Gaspari pride. She can't bend the way we do. Let her have her fairy tales.”

There was nothing Lu could do but nod. And her mother's hand finally relaxed.

For the next six weeks Lu lived in a nightmare of rushing to New Haven after the curtain came down each night in New York, catching a few hours’ sleep in the house in which she'd grown up, going to the hospital at daybreak to sit at her mother's bedside, and then racing back to New York in time to go onstage. George had no notes for her during those grim weeks, and on her trips back and forth to New Haven she wondered if by some miracle she was actually managing to do a decent job each night or if he was just going easy on her. She didn't ask because she didn't want to know.