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for almost getting yourself killed on account of me, but would it help just to tell you I love you?”

Dolly felt a jolt, as if she were being hit by that cab all over again. Had Annie really said that? Not in all the years she’d known her, had Dolly ever heard Annie say those words to her. I love you. Her eyes filled with tears, which she quickly blotted with a corner of her sheet before they could smear her mascara.

“Oh, sugar, it does me a world of good, your saying that. But …”

Now was the time. Before the moment slipped past. The truth about dear, self-sacrificing Aunt Dolly.

“Speaking of love, I was expecting to find Henri camped out here as usual,” Annie interrupted. Clearly uncomfortable with a large dose of sentiment, she was already backing off from a scene that could turn maudlin. She laughed lightly and added, “Don’t tell me. He’s off ordering the wedding invitations, right?”

“Not so fast. He won’t get his divorce for another six months, maybe longer.” Dolly tried to pull herself up a bit, but the effort sent pain stabbing through her rib cage. She grimaced. Then there was Annie, reaching behind her to rearrange her pillows. “But,” she added, “I’ve waited so long, what’s another few months?”

“You’re right. Henri’s definitely worth the wait.” Annie’s dark-blue eyes seemed to cloud over then, and Dolly wondered if she was thinking about Emmett. Annie had told her about his moving to California. What Dolly itched to tell her was, Go after him … don’t let him get away.

But look what had happened the last time she’d tried to straighten out Annie’s affairs-she’d nearly gotten herself killed.

“Annie,” she began, capturing her niece’s moist hand and tugging her gently down onto the bed beside her. “There’s something that’s been on my mind for a long time. I’ve been meaning to tell you, and if I don’t get it off my chest now, while I’m lying here with all my defenses down, I don’t know when I’ll ever again get up the nerve.”

“It’s about Dearie, isn’t it?”

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Dolly nodded, her throat suddenly thick.

“Your mama was a good person,” she began. “And I don’t want you thinking what happened to her was her fault… because it wasn’t. I know. It was me that brought all that misery down on her … and on you and your sister, too. Lord knows I’m not asking your forgiveness. Not when I can hardly forgive myself. You see, I did a terrible thing … the thing that ruined your mother’s career, and broke her heart. I just want you to know-“

“You don’t have to say it,” Annie broke in, squeezing Dolly’s hand hard enough to send darts of pain shooting up into her wrists. “For a long, long time I wondered what had happened between you and Dearie-what could have been so terrible that it made her stop speaking to you for all those years. And now …” She paused, looking as though she wanted to choose her words carefully. “… I know that whatever it was, nothing can change how I feel about you. I’m not my mother,” she added softly. “What came between you and her … well, I’m not the one to judge. And whatever it was that made you think you’re responsible for the way things turned out … well, she made her own choices, too. I loved her. She was my mother. But she wasn’t perfect.”

Dolly felt relief, like a vast ocean wave, sweep through her. It was as if for years and years she’d been scrubbing at a stain that wouldn’t come out, and now suddenly it was gone.

“I loved her, too,” she said. Oh, how good it felt to be able to say those words aloud without feeling like the worst sort of hypocrite!

“I know,” Annie said. “Why else would I be here?”

aurel eyed the flowers Dolly was clutching as the older woman, resplendent in crimson,

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made her way up the aisle of the sedate Church of the Resurrection on East Seventy-fourth Street.

No traditional bridal bouquet for her aunt just a single spray of orchids, deep purple ones striped with yellow. Her dress, too … not white lace, but a red silk suit with a flaring peplum jacket edged in cream silk twist A huge cartwheel hat with a cream-colored ribbon was tilted at a jaunty angle atop her piled-up platinum hair its pearl-studded netting dipping down over her eyes, giving her the look of a forties movie siren. Dolly’s gaze was fixed on the altar, decked with a profusion of lush roses, just ahead of her, where Henri, solid and sober-looking in a pearl-gray cutaway and vest, stood waiting.

But it wasn’t, Laurel realized, the bright dress or the extravagant hat or the orchids that were making such a glow. It was that look on Dolly’s face, her smile that lit the somber sanctuary-as if she’d swallowed the sun whole for breakfast.

Sitting on her hard pew right up in front, just a few feet from the altar, Laurel felt her throat tighten. She was happy for Dolly. She was. No one deserved this happiness more. But Dolly was not the reason she was choked up right now.

“^•^he^anœd~ov๋rV^e;i๋te๋lrtK-Cta,ปCK>5&r*f aisle. Beside her, Adam squirmed and whispered, Why can’t Daddy sit with us?”

“Because,” she whispered back. This was hardly the time to go over it again with Adam, and besides she was too upset. Seeing Joe, here, of all places, was hard enough. Maybe that was why Dolly had chosen not to have any attendants-she’d have known how Tom up Laurel would have felt, taking part in a wedding when her own marriage was in shambles.

Looking at Joe out of the corner of her eye, she felt her heart catch, and thought, He cut his hair. It was always .ซw little-Mnj?. knocking her off balance. Days or weeks would go by when she didn ‘( see him, and c๙en insteaJof just pulling into the driveway and honking his horn for Adam, he’d show up at the door … and she’d be overwhelmed by even the smallest changes-one sideburn cut

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slightly shorter than the other, a button missing from his favorite shearling jacket, a shirt or a pair of pants she hadn’t seen on him before.

Eleven and a half months and I still break out in goose bumps whenever I see you … or hear your voice over the phone. I’ll catch myself daydreaming, and find I’ve set an extra place for you at the table … or
‘
/ be calling Annie or Dolly, and realize I’ve dialled your number by mistake. And that old Yankees sweatshirt of yours that I told you I couldn’t find … well, I have it. I keep it in my closet, and sometimes at night when I can’t sleep, I get up and find it, keep it next to me to breathe in your smell… .

Stop it. Forget that stuff. She mustn’t keep thinking of him. Or she’d never be able to get through the rest of this day.

Laurel felt her eyes begin to sting. She willed herself not to cry. God, if she started, she might never stop. It might look as if she was crying out of happiness for Aunt Dolly; but it’d be for herself, grieving for her husband who sat across the aisle, a stranger in a navy suit and striped tie. Close enough for her to reach across and almost touch … but so far away they might have been on separate continents.

Can I go on like this? Can I keep on living without him?

Well, you have, for almost a whole year, she told herself.

Those first weeks of misery-she’d gotten through them by imagining her life as a painting she was gessoing over, preparing a blank white canvas on which she would paint something new, maybe something better. It would be a lot of work, exhausting, having to start from scratch, but she would do it. Others did. Besides, she wanted to. She had to prove to herself that she could stand on her owx two feet.

And she’d managed to pull it off, hadn’t she? More canunjssioas fhafi sue couldhaadle. Andnowa booksfiโ‘d both written and illustrated on the Publishers Weekly ^outvc,Teadet’s besX-seYVet Y\%t. Smce \ts J\me pubUcation, Patches for Penelope-about a little girl, who, by helping

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her grandmother make a patchwork quilt, learns to cope with her parents’ divorce-had gone back to press three times. Lovely reviews. But best of all, the kids liked it. She’d seen them entranced, sitting around in a circle being read to in the Bayside library.

Like Penelope, she, too, was somehow coping. Mostly, she’d found, it was a matter of finding little ways of tricking herself into not feeling so lonely. Making a lunch or dinner date with one of her publishing pals on birthdays and anniversaries, to avoid sitting home and pining. Staying Busy-in the evenings forcing herself to go to a PTA meeting or a gallery opening … even when she’d rather curl up in bed with a good book. Making Time for Herself-fixing her hair and putting on a little makeup, even when she was sure no one but Adam and possibly the mailman was going to see her.

But if she’d grown so strong, how was it that all her carefully cultivated independence crumbled the second she laid eyes on Joe?

Laurel, swallowing hard against the tightness in her throat, focused on Annie, seated on her left next to Adam, wearing a black-and-white houndstooth skirt and fitted red jacket. Please, God, give me some of Annie’s strength.

But Annie, she saw, was weeping. She didn’t seem to notice or care that it was ruining her makeup. Mascara was smudged under her eyes, and inky tears dropped from her jaw onto her folded hands. She’d been chewing her fingernails again too, Laurel noticed. Was she thinking about Emmett, missing him … or was it Joe?

Laurel could see Adam staring quizzically at Annie, and it struck Laurel: He’s never seen her cry. Mom’s crying, on the other hand, was old hat-Laurel had about as much control in that department as a leaky faucet. Now she watched her eight-year-old son tug on Annie’s sleeve, and offer her the small, plastic Mighty Mite model clutched in his sweaty fist. Annie, accepting his gift with reverence, slipped her arm about his small shoulders and gave him a squeeze.

Laurel, feeling her own tears begin to well up, tried to concentrate on what the bald-headed, hawk-nosed min-

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ister was saying. But his words, though they had a hearty, uplifting ring to them, were just sounds. Was she being terribly selfish, with Dolly getting married, to be feeling so heartsick about Joe?

Laurel suddenly became acutely aware of the space separating her from Joe, a few feet that seemed to bristle, making her whole right side feel tight and tingly. She ached to have him beside her, his arm around her, his hand in hers … but she knew that if she made one move toward him, afterwards she wouldn’t be able to stop herself from begging him to come home with her.

No, she told herself. No, I’ve fought too hard for this. I won’t let him take all that away from me.

He wouldn’t mean to, of course. But he would, just the same. With just a gesture, a touch, a stray kiss, he’d destroy her newfound self-reliance as easily as a child kicking over a sand castle. By loving her-but not enough. By making her need him more than she needed herself.

A bell was tinkling, part of the service, and now she found herself thinking of Uncle Rudy, remembering that L.A. lawyer phoning. “Your uncle has died,” he’d said. Three months ago. How sad she’d felt, then how shocked. He’d left a fortune-the house in Malibu and the one in Brentwood, not to mention checks every month from partnerships in shopping malls and office buildings-to her and to Adam. And he’d given her something more precious even than the money itself-financial security. Now, she would never need Joe’s money, or any man’s.

But this isn’t about money, is it?

Oh, she so envied Dolly. Even from this distance, there was no mistaking that Henri’s eyes and heart were for Dolly, and Dolly alone.

Laurel looked about, recognizing a number of the guests, most of them Dolly’s friends. Colleagues from the Confectioners Association, her housekeeper, her driver. Gloria De Witt, who’d once managed Dolly’s shop, wearing an oversize jacket embroidered with sequins over a slinky purple dress. And wasn’t that old guy in back the one Dolly had lent money to so he could start his own florist business? The heavyset black lady next to her door-

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man friend, Bill, she was the founder of the Harlem Coalition-Laurel recognized her from news photos. Dolly had helped her raise money for scholarships for ghetto kids. The woman, Laurel saw, was sniffling into a handkerchief.

And Rivka, wearing a modest blue sweater-dress and her best shaitel-she had come, too. Religious Jews, Laurel knew, weren’t supposed to enter churches-but for Dolly, Rivka had made an exception. Laurel recalled how when Channa, Rivka’s youngest grandchild, was in the hospital recuperating from meningitis, Dolly had hired a clown, who arrived at Kings County with balloons and a bag full of magic tricks. Rivka had scolded Dolly. It was too extravagant, not in the least necessary. But then she’d hugged Dolly and confessed that she’d never seen Channa look so happy.

Laurel had promised herself while Dolly and Henri were exchanging their vows that she would not look at Joe. But now, like an alcoholic too weak to resist that one little drink, she sneaked a sidelong glance.

But Joe’s gaze, she saw, also wasn’t on the altarhe was looking straight at her. Laurel felt guilty, as if she’d been caught cheating on an exam. She could feel blood rushing up into her face.

And he wasn’t just looking; it was the way he was looking at her: puzzled, bemused maybe, as if she were a stranger he thought he might have met and was trying to place.

Excuse me, madam, but you look awfully familiar. Are you sure we weren’t married at one time?

Laurel, feeling a hysterical giggle about to erupt, had to clamp the tip of her tongue between her teeth. Tears leaked from the corners of her eyes. You don’t need him, she reminded herself. You only think you do.

She remembered the big rainstorm the first week after Joe moved out. It had knocked a branch from the sycamore tree onto the roof over the garage-the kind of thing Joe would have taken care of, but now she was in charge. Yet in a way, it had been good for her, forcing her out of her bleary, apathetic state, getting her to change

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out of the old flannel robe and sheepskin slippers she’d been hibernating in for days. Outside, ankle-deep in mud, struggling to get the aluminum extension ladder propped against the tree, she had slipped and fallen on her rear. Shocked, her bottom smarting, she’d started sobbing. But then after a while she began to see how ridiculous she had to look, lying there in the mud, crying like a big overgrown baby.