In New Haven, Lu became the one everyone else leaned on. Her brothers waited for her to show up to make the decisions about their mother's care. Even Eddie, who had dropped the search for his true self and was back practicing medicine in California, was too upset to discuss his mother's treatment with her doctors on the telephone. It was all up to Lu. And as she ran through her days, she was always aware of a pair of glowering green eyes following her.

Then came the afternoon when Mifalda motioned Lu to the bed and asked her in a voice that was now not even a whisper to sing the Panis Angelicus.

And so Lu began.

“Pants Angelicus

Fit pants hominum;

Oat panis coelicus

Figuris terminum:

O res mirabilis!”

And, o res mirabilis, her voice, roughened by lack of sleep and years of belting on Broadway, still sounded as clear and pure as it had when she was studying with Maestro DiTullio. Mifalda drifted off to sleep with a smile on her face. And from the corner of her room, the green eyes were unreadable as they watched. The next morning Mifalda was gone.

THERE WAS A knock on Lu's dressing room door. Lu shook herself out of her reverie and checked her watch. George was right on time. They did their ritual air kiss, George stole the bread off her plate—also a ritual—and they got down to business.

“The string section in the opening number …” Lu said. They'd been doing this for so long, they had their own shorthand.

“Second violin was flat. Took care of it.”

“In Act Two …”

“The tempo was too fast going into the duet. Fixed it.” He paused. There was more—and worse—to come and they both knew it.

“I was off in the last act,” Lu said.

“You were off for the whole show,” George said brutally. “You have been for a week now. What's wrong?”

She'd told herself she wouldn't talk about it, but she heard herself saying, “It's my daughter.”

Everyone knew Lu had a little girl; she'd never tried to keep it a secret. And like most people, George had swallowed the story of the husband who had been killed in the war. Or, at least, he pretended that he had.

“She's in boarding school, right?”

“That's where I wanted her to go.” Lu rubbed her temples carefully so she wouldn't mess her makeup. “I found this place called Marlboro Hall, a Catholic girls’ school right outside New Haven. I thought it would be easier for Rose to stay close to the place where she grew up, and she always liked the nuns at St. Mary's, so a parochial school would be more familiar for her. I really tried to think it all through.” Lu paused. “She hated Marlboro Hall. First she stopped eating; then she ran away. The second time she did it, the Mother Superior sent her back to me.”

“When was that?”