“Then in 1973Bobby Manning had a heart attack and died. It happened during a hot weekend in July. He was staying at his mother-in-law's cottage in upstate New York, where he was putting the finishing touches on his new musical. The lights on Broadway were dimmed for five minutes the night they announced his demise, and his funeral at Campbell's was attended by 680mourners. After the ceremony, Rose Manning seemed to disappear from sight. Friends assumed she was too grief-stricken to appear in public. Nobody dreamed that she was quietly selling her Park Avenue penthouse, her furs, her car, her jewels, and her entire designer wardrobe and giving the proceeds to the Archdiocese of New York. She moved herself and her daughter into a small apartment in a risky part of town so she could cut costs and have more money to give to the poor.”

There was more to the article, but Carrie already knew the rest of the tale. It really hadn't been necessary for Rose to go to such lengths to do her good deeds. The royalties from Bobby Manning's musicals and songs were substantial. There was one cash cow, a Christmas song written for The Lady, that was a gift that kept on giving year after year. Bobby had spent whatever he earned during his lifetime—everyone knew that—but he was bringing in enough posthumously so that Rose could have kept her penthouse and contributed, within reason, to any number of pet charities. But Rose Manning had gone for broke. Literally. And it wasn't just the charity stuff. She'd cut herself off from all her friends and all her theater connections. It was as if she'd decided to be reborn. And no one knew why.

In the beginning Rose had intended to drop off the radar—Carrie had always believed that, no matter how much Zoe laughed at the idea. When Rose gave her huge check to the archdiocese she insisted that she wanted to remain anonymous. She had asked that the money be used to purchase an old house near her church that was to be used as a homeless shelter, but she wouldn't let Father Xavier, the priest in charge of the place, put her name on it. She wouldn't even let him add her name to the donors list in her parish newsletter.