“Including his mother-in-law?” It was a rude question. And it was certainly one you didn't ask a virtual stranger. But Carrie didn't care. She needed to know.

“I didn't know he was planning to leave Rose,” Lu said. “And I definitely didn't know he was taking his new girlfriend to my house that weekend.”

“Would you have let him go there if you had?”

“No. And I told Rose that. I tried to.”

Carrie could imagine the scene. “But she didn't believe you.”

“It was like she'd lost her mind. She screamed that I was lying. She said I'd be his pimp if I thought that would help him finish his show. I'd go out and find the girls myself. All I could do was tell her she was wrong.” Lu paused. “So she told me to prove it.”

And Carrie knew that whatever was coming next was the big betrayal. This was what had sent Lu into early retirement.

“What did she want you to do?” Carrie asked.

Lu closed her eyes. When she spoke, her voice was ragged. “She wanted me to call Bobby on the phone and tell him I was turning down the show. She wanted me to promise that I'd never work with him because of what he'd done to her.”

Carrie didn't have to ask what Lu had answered. Her grandmother's straight spine was sagging now; she didn't look ten years younger anymore. Carrie got up and put her arms around her, holding her. She thought she heard a sob, but she wasn't sure. “It's okay,” she whispered. “It's okay.”

But after a second, Lu pulled away and straightened up again. “I told her no,” she said.

“You had to—that's who you are. And it's okay.”

“Your mother didn't see it that way.”

“She couldn't. Because that's who she was.”

“Rose told me she never wanted to see me again and she ran out the door.” Lu leaned against Carrie, and they sat together silently in the waning sunshine.

“I thought it would pass over,” Lu went on after a moment. “I knew she'd be better off with Bobby gone, and I thought if she could just have time to find out that she was happier without him, she wouldn't be so angry … But when she got back to her apartment, there was a message from Sandy. Bobby had had a heart attack out in the country. He'd forgotten his medicine back at the apartment, and by the time Sandy got him to a hospital up there in the middle of nowhere, he was in bad shape.