Marco got in the back, and just as they were about to pull away a car started up with a roar nearby and raced off down the street. A man ran up, opened the door on Tina’s side, forced himself in beside and partly over her, and shouted, “Follow that car!”

“Oh, my God,” said Angela, “this is all we need!”

“Sorry, signora,” said the man. “It’s a thief. I have to get the license number.”

Tina felt bizarre, as if her life, like her insides, were out of whack, all control gone. She began to giggle in a hysterical way.

“It’s not funny, signorina,” the man sitting on her said as he tried to turn his head toward her. “They’re thieves, and if we can get close at the next traffic light, I can get their number.”

“I know it’s not funny,” Tina said, still laughing, “it’s this crazy country.”

Angela sped down a few blocks along the Viale Parioli into Via Flaminia but missed the changing of the light and slowed down.

“Go through the light, you can still overtake them!” Marco shouted from the back.

But it was too late, they lost the car. “I’m sorry,” Angela told the man. “All I can do now is take you to the nearest telephone so that you can report it to the police.”

The man was left at a bar, and Angela got Tina back home.

“What took so long?” Weezy asked. “I was getting worried—I thought papà would be asking about you. Just open the door to his study and say good-night. I told him you were at Missy’s.”

When Tina was in bed, Weezy brought her a cup of chamomile tea.

“Just like Peter Rabbit,” Tina said, as she sipped the tea. “Do you remember, Weezy, when Mom used to read to us the story of Peter Rabbit who was bad and disobeyed and so was put to bed with chamomile tea, while Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cotton-tail got bread and milk and blackberries ’cause they were good?”

“Was it awful?” her sister asked softly.

“Yes,” said Tina. “Awful. Humiliating. I should have trusted you and the feminists. I’ve done everything wrong . . . everything.”

“Never mind. Will you be all right?” Weezy asked.

“Yes—thanks to Mom, I’m one of the lucky ones who had the money. The women who get it done on a kitchen table with knitting needles aren’t so lucky.”

“When we change things it won’t be like this anymore, Tina.”

“Change things, Weezy, change them.”

“Good-bye, papà, take care of yourself while I’m gone. I’ll send cards from along the way.”

Tina picked up a duffel bag as the elevator doors opened. She had attached the tin heart from her mother’s room to her shoulder bag. She turned and kissed her father.

“You’re all leaving me,” he said with a thin smile.