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  Madelaine wanted so badly to do the right thing, be the right thing, but what did she know of motherhood? She’d gotten pregnant as a teenager—much too young. She’d known she had to take care of her daughter, give Lina a good, stable life. Medical school had been a pie-in-the-sky goal at first. Madelaine had never believed she’d actually make it, but she’d kept plugging away, spending the trust fund that was her mother’s legacy. She’d worked her ass off to become the best and brightest of the graduating class, and she’d finished early.

  But somewhere along the way, she’d gone wrong. At first it was little things—a missed birthday party, an emergency call on family night, a field trip she couldn’t make. Madelaine had been so consumed by her own ambition, she’d never noticed when her daughter stopped inviting her places, stopped counting on her to be somewhere or do something.

  Now she was paying the price.

  She pulled into the school parking lot, got out of the car, and strode through the school to the counselor’s office. At the closed door, she knocked sharply.

  A muffled “come in” answered her.

  Exhaling steadily, Madelaine collected herself, then went inside.

  The counselor, a pert brunette named Vicki Owen, smiled broadly and extended her hand. “Hello, Dr. Hillyard. Come in. Sit down.”

  Madelaine shook the woman’s hand. “Call me Madeline, please.”

  Vicki took a seat behind her desk and pulled out a stack of papers. “I asked for this meeting because Lina is exhibiting some serious behavioral problems. She’s skipping classes, forgetting to turn in homework, mouthing off. Frankly, her teachers are at a loss. She used to be such a wonderful student.”

  Madelaine felt every word like a blow. She knew it was true, knew her daughter was in trouble, but she didn’t know what to do about it.

  Vicki’s face softened in understanding. “Don’t worry, Madelaine, it’s not just you. Every mother of a sixteen-year-old daughter feels the same way.”

  Madelaine wanted to believe the counselor’s words, but she couldn’t allow herself such an easy way out. “Thank you,” she mumbled.

  “Would you like to talk about it?”

  Madelaine gazed steadily into the counselor’s dark eyes. She wanted to share her burden with this young woman, to lay her cards on the table and say Help me, I’m lost, but she didn’t know how to be so open. She’d been taught from earliest memory to buck up and be strong. Showing weakness was incomprehensible to her. “I don’t think talking will solve my problem,” she said evenly.

  Vicki paused for a moment longer, waiting, then she went on, “Lina’s teachers tell me that she responds well to discipline. Rules.”

  Madelaine flinched at the subtle reproach. “Yes, she does. I just …” She stared at Vicki. I just don’t know how. “I think she needs more time with me.”

  “Perhaps,” Vicki answered doubtfully.

  “I’ll talk to her.”

  Vicki folded her hands on the table. “You know, Madelaine, some things can’t be talked out. Sometimes a teenager needs to feel the wrath of God. Perhaps her father…”

  “No,” Madelaine said quickly—too quickly. She tried to force a smile. “I’m a single parent.”

  “I see.”

  Madelaine couldn’t sit there another minute, couldn’t take what she saw in the counselor’s eyes. Her shame and guilt were overpowering. She lurched to her feet. “I’ll handle this, Vicki. You have my word on it.”

  Vicki nodded. “The supermom is a tough row to hoe, Madelaine. There are several outstanding support groups that can help out.”

  “Thank you. I appreciate your concern.” With a final nod, Madelaine turned and walked from the office. When the door clicked shut behind her, she closed her eyes for a second.

  Perhaps her father…

  She groaned. God, she didn’t want to think about Lina’s father. For years she’d pushed him out of her thoughts. And if, sometimes, late at night, the memories came to her, she shoved them away with a cold shower or a run around the block.

  It had worked, too. After a while she stopped thinking about him, stopped needing or wanting him. There had been a time when she’d almost forgotten what he looked like.

  Then Lina had begun to change. It had been subtle at first, the transformations. A few more holes in her ears, tears in her Levi’s, dark mascara smudged around her beautiful blue eyes.

  As usual, Madelaine had barely noticed. Then, one day, she looked up at her daughter and saw him. She’d realized then what she should have seen since childhood. Lina was the spitting image of her father, a wild teenager who lived life at a full run, taking no prisoners, asking for nothing. Like her father, too, Lina saw through Madelaine’s brittle exterior, saw the weak woman inside. A woman who couldn’t make rules, couldn’t enforce even the simplest conditions. A woman who was so desperate for love that she let people walk all over her.

  Lina Hillyard took a long, stinging drag off her cigarette and exhaled. The smoke collected against the windshield and hung suspended, mingling with the massive cloud that was already there. She held back a hacking cough by sheer force of will.

  Shifting uncomfortably on the narrow seat, she cast a surreptitious glance at the boy beside her. Jett was driving fast, as usual, his foot slammed onto the gas. Pedal, his free hand curled around a bottle of Jack Daniel’s he’d stolen from his parents. On the other side of her, Brittany Levin was sucking on a lime—the last stage of her tequila slammer. Everyone was laughing and talking and singing along with the radio. It was blasting a song by the Butthole Surfers.

  The song ended and something softer began. Jett cursed loudly and switched the radio off, then swerved onto the side of the road and hit the brakes so hard that all of them were hurled forward. Lina’s hand shot out instinctively, slammed against the windshield. Her cigarette hit the dashboard and rolled toward the vent.

  The little Datsun’s doors flipped open and everyone spilled out Lina reached for her cigarette. By the time she’d retrieved it, the gang was already outside, milling beneath a huge cedar tree in the center of the clearing.

  It was their Saturday night party spot. Yellowed cigarette butts already littered the ground, alongside empty liquor bottles and roach clips and crumpled smoke packs. Someone had brought a boom box, and loud music vibrated through the air.

  Lina dropped her cigarette and ground it out beneath her heel, then headed toward the group. Jett was standing alongside the tree, guzzling Jack Daniel’s as if it were water. The golden alcohol trickled down his stubbly chin and dripped onto his T-shirt.

  She wished she knew what to say to him now—just the right thing that would make him look at her, see her. She’d had a crush on him for as long as she could remember; he was so cool. And they had something in common. Jett had grown up without a father around. Lina was certain it meant something—some destiny thing—that their lives were so alike. But he never seemed to notice her, none of them did. She was like a ghost, hovering on the perimeter of their friendship, trying to find the words that would admit her.

  “Hey, Hillyard,” Jett called out, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth. “You got any money? We need more smokes.”

  Lina grinned and tucked a stray lock of black hair around her ear. It wasn’t much, she knew, but it meant that he wanted something from her, needed something. She always had more money than the rest of the kids. (It was the one cool thing her evil mother did.) “Yeah, I got enough for a couple of packs,” she answered, digging into her jeans pocket.

  Brittany gave her a stinging look. Then she flipped open her purse and pulled out the pint of tequila. “Here, Lina, have a drink.”

  Lina grabbed the bottle’s warm neck and took a burning drink. The tequila ignited along her throat and exploded in her stomach.

  Brittany ran a hand through her short-cropped hair and sidled up to Jett. Staring triumphantly at Lina, she reached up and planted a long, wet kiss on his mouth. Jett’s hand slid around Brittany’s waist and pulled
her close. “You taste like tequila,” he murmured. Then he looked around. “Who’s got the pot?”

  Within seconds, the night air was thick with the sweet scent of marijuana. The kids drew together in a circle, passing the joint from one to another, laughing and dancing.

  Lina felt the effects of the stuff in her bloodstream. The world seemed to slow down. Her body turned to heavy syrup and she sank slowly, slowly downward.

  She closed her eyes and swayed. God, it felt good to be zoned out. When she was like this, there were so many things she didn’t care about. Suddenly it didn’t matter that her perfect mother was meeting with the school counselor today. Nothing hurt her when she was high.

  Even the questions that had haunted her all day now felt as insubstantial as the smoke rising from her cigarette.

  Brittany plopped down beside her. “I saw your dipshit mom going into Miss Owen’s office today.”

  Jett laughed. “Ooh, you’re in trouble now, Hillyard.”

  “Yeah, I saw her, too,” someone cut in. “She may be a bitch, but your mom is hot.”

  “She could be a model,” Brittany said, then leaned close. “You sure don’t look like her. Who do you look like in your family?”

  Lina flinched and reached for her smokes. Sometimes she hated Brittany more than she could stand. “My dad, I guess.”

  Brittany gave her a cold, assessing look. “Course, that’s just a guess.” She took another huge gulp of tequila, laughing as she swallowed. Then she surged to her feet. “Hey, I got an idea.” She raced over to Jett and whispered something in his ear, and they both started laughing.

  Jett dropped the empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s and made his stumbling, lurching way to the car. He opened the trunk and rummaged through the stuff in the back, grabbed a few things, then ran back to the clearing. A big, alcohol-soaked grin exploded on his face. “Hillyard, we’re going to figure out who your dad is.”

  Lina didn’t answer. They didn’t understand—none of them understood—how much they could hurt her with their careless words. “What do you mean?” she asked softly.

  He squatted until he was eye level with her. “We’re going to see who you look like. It’ll be cool. You’ll see.” Before she could think of what to say, he’d slapped an old baseball cap on her head and whipped out a pair of scissors. “I’ll cut around the outline of the hat—it’ll be awesome.” He hiccuped drunkenly and laughed.

  Alarm flared in her. “Wait a second—”

  “My old lady’s a hairdresser. I know what I’m doing,” Jett said.

  Brittany stared down at her. “You aren’t chicken, are you, Lina?”

  The other kids closed in around them.

  Lina bit down on her lower lip to keep it from trembling, but she never looked away from Brittany’s face. “I’m not chicken,” she said. “Besides, short hair is way cooler.” She turned to Jett, giving him her biggest, bravest smile. “Go ahead.”

  Jett started snipping. Big clumps of jet-black hair slid down her Levi’s jacket. She flinched at each snip-snip-snip, and felt as if pieces of her were falling away.

  Brittany fished a mirror out of her purse and handed it to Lina. There was a victorious gleam in her brown eyes. Slowly Lina picked up the mirror and stared at her own face. For a second she couldn’t breathe, but after a minute, she wasn’t looking at the shaggy, hacked-up haircut. She was staring at her own reflection.

  The questions came flooding back, and this time the booze and pot offered no sanctuary at all. Suddenly she was thinking of her father—the mysterious father—who’d marked her face and imprinted her soul. As always, she wondered what he was doing right now. Was he coming home from work? Kissing some other child that he’d fathered along the way, one he’d stayed around to raise?

  Everything would be different if I knew you, she thought for the millionth time.

  “She looks like Mr. Sears,” Brittany said, laughing shrilly. “Hey, Hillyard, maybe the school janitor is your dad.”

  Jett picked up a joint and took a hit. Smoke poured from his mouth as he said, “I don’t know why you don’t just ask your old lady. My mom gave me my dad’s address a few years ago. She told me to go live with him, and good riddance.”

  Just ask.

  Lina shivered at the thought. Maybe she would this time. Her sixteenth birthday was coming up….

  The thought coalesced, took shape in her mind until her whole body was shaking. Anticipation blossomed into a living, breathing presence inside her. She knew suddenly what she wanted for her birthday. “It’s time,” she said to herself, feeling the beginnings of a smile.

  “What do you think, Lina?” Brittany’s nasal voice broke into her thoughts.

  Lina’s gaze jerked up. For a split second she couldn’t figure out what they were all waiting for; then she remembered. The haircut. She looked first at Jett, then at Brittany—who was so clueless, she thought a frigging haircut mattered. “It’s way cool. Thanks, Jett. Now, hand me the tequila.”

  Chapter Three

  Madelaine dropped the expensive shopping bags on the creaky old dock and sat down.

  Salty air caressed her cheeks, tugged at the short strands that framed her face. The dark green water stared back at her, rolling gently, spanking the barnacle-studded pilings, coughing up foam. The dock groaned beneath her, shifted with each push of the tide, as if it were fighting to hold its place against the monumental force of the sea.

  “Hi, Mama,” she said, her voice as soft and low as the wind whispering through the decrepit boards.

  The sea gazed back at her, waiting, rolling.

  She ached to feel close to her mother here, the only place on earth where such a feeling was even possible, but it was difficult, manufacturing a tie that had been broken so many years before. Yet still she tried; the first Sunday of each month she returned and spoke to the woman who should have shaped her life.

  She’d first come here when she was six years old. A reed-thin, plain-faced child dressed like a tiny doll, her black patent Mary Janes pressed together at the ankles, her black satin dress billowing in the wind.

  She closed her eyes and let the memories flow, all that she had left. Her father, standing on the edge of this dock beside her, his Burberry coat flapping, his cheeks reddened by the cold. He’d seemed so big then, huge and indestructible, with a voice like a foghorn and eyes that never looked at her.

  Her mother’s ashes floating on the surface of the water…

  Don’t cry, girl. It won’t bring her back.

  Madelaine had done as he asked, as she always did, holding back the tears one breath at a time. The sea had blurred before her eyes, shimmered into a huge, endless swath of blue that once had meant nothing to her, and now held all that remained of her mother.

  It had taken her years to come back to this place, and once she did, she couldn’t stay away.

  Behind her, the packages rustled again, reminding her of why she was here, of the reassurance she needed from her mother.

  “It’s Lina’s birthday tomorrow,” she said quietly.

  The words were lost, taken and twisted and swallowed by the breeze. After a grueling workday, she’d gone shopping, agonizing over each purchase, wanting each one to be just right. The bridge that would bring her and Lina back together. A miraculous glue that would bind the fraying seam of their relationship.

  She wanted tomorrow’s party to be a new beginning for her and Lina, the mother and daughter who’d slid so far apart. But how?

  That was the question she’d brought for her long-dead mother. How did two people who were supposed to love each other find their way back? How were wrong paths made miraculously right?

  Help me find my way, Mama.

  She lifted her head, stared out at the sparkling water. As usual, no answer came to her, nothing but the ceaseless rhythm of the waves slapping against the dock. The wind picked up, pushing the waves harder and harder against the pilings. Overhead, a gull wheeled and cawed and dove into the sea.

&nbs
p; “I thought I’d find you here.”

  Francis DeMarco’s voice was a warm, welcome balm. She should have known that he would show up. Smiling, she twisted around to see him.

  He stood a few feet behind her, tall and straight, his long arms dangling at his sides. He looked, as always, slightly awkward and unsure of himself in his severe priest’s clothes, the jet-black cloth a stark contrast to his pale, clear skin. A lock of tangled, wheat-colored hair lay flopped across one eye. Impatiently he shoved it aside, and it fell right back.

  Madeline’s heart swelled almost painfully at the sight of him. He stared at her as he always did, his eyes shining and intense, his mouth poised on the brink of a smile.

  “Hey, Francis,” she said.

  He smiled in that boyish way of his, his whole face crinkling with the motion. He looked heartbreakingly naive for a man full grown. “I missed you in church this morning.”

  She grinned at the old joke. “I prayed in the OR. And at the cosmetics counter at Nordstrom’s.”

  He moved toward her, his heels clicking on the tired old wood. His knees creaked as he sat beside her. His gaze cut to the sea. “She answer this time?”

  From anyone else, the question would have stung, but not from Francis, her Francis, who knew her better than anyone else in the world. Sighing, she leaned against him and slipped her hand in his.

  He’d been her anchor for so many years. Her best friend. The strength she’d never found in her own soul, she’d always found in his.

  “No, no answer.”

  “You ready for the party tomorrow? I see you’ve cleaned out Nordy’s and Tower Records.”

  She laughed, and it felt good. She didn’t laugh nearly enough. “Classic single-parent-with-a-troubled-teen syndrome. Buy, buy, buy.”

  A companionable silence slipped between them. Madelaine stared out at the sea, listening to its rhythmic breathing, feeling its movement in the wood beneath her.

  When Francis started to speak, his voice was so quiet that for a second, Madelaine didn’t even notice.