Three small pots of poinsettia add color to the bay window over the sink. The living room is clean and ready. The bedrooms and my office are straightened up. I have a window of time, so I check my face and sure enough there’s a bloom of purple under my eye. I should get some ice for it. But instead I get the holiday bandanna I bought for Disney and tie it around his neck. I swear he tilts his chin up and prances around like he thinks he’s extra handsome. I sit on the sofa with a new murder mystery, my feet propped on the coffee table. Disney jumps up and glides his head on my thigh. I read a few pages.

The phone rings.

“Hey. How’re the cookies?”

“Cooling. How’re you feeling, Tara? How’s the baby?”

“Kicking the hell outta my bladder. I feel like I’m nothing but a ball with a head and tiny appendages.”

I chuckle, because that’s pretty much how she looks. All baby way out front and she has a month to go. “How’s Aaron?” I remember to include him as though he’s part of the family, though I’m not sure he’ll be permanent. Maybe no one’s permanent. But he’ll always be the father of my first grandchild.

“We’re in the recording studio…. He and Red are changing some lyrics, so I thought I’d call. I’m on break.”

I picture Tara with her dyed black hair and blue chunks, sitting in the vestibule of a recording studio. In my image, there’s a cigarette dangling from her fingers, but she quit when she found out she was pregnant, so I erase the cigarette. She became pregnant shortly before she graduated from high school. She told me in an offhanded way, as though she were telling me she was going to the movies. Her casualness was a way to diminish her concerns about my reaction or, perhaps, to encourage a nonchalant response from me.

“What in the world are you going to do?” I asked her. It’s amazing to me that I have two such different daughters. Sky always told me everything. Tara said as little as possible. Sky sometimes hung out with me during high school. Tara wouldn’t have been caught dead with me in public. Sky did what she was supposed to do, considering the future. Tara did what she thought of at the moment, living in the eternal now.

She blinked long light eyelashes at me and shrugged. Took a drag on a cigarette and snuffed it out. “Guess I’ll have to stop.”