“That’s good, then.”

  “Yes. Although Anne can still use that in court as proof that his home might not be the best environment for a young girl.” He paused. “There’s something else.”

  Kelly waited.

  “I’ve seen another woman.”

  “Seen?”

  “I’ve slept with another woman. Her name is Lacey Corriea. She’s a nurse. I worked with her last year at Mt. Auburn. We had an affair. I ended it. Then I saw her again. Twice. About two weeks ago and again just last week. For one night.”

  Kelly couldn’t find her breath. She couldn’t turn to look at the man next to her. From a tree behind her, a leaf drifted down, landing on her arm, and she could not move to brush it away.

  Quietly, Randall continued. “I don’t love Lacey. I never told her I did. In my defense I never promised her anything. I’m sorry I hurt her, if I did.” He cleared his throat. “But you see, Lacey would make an excellent mother. And I need to be with a woman who will be a good stepmother for Tessa. And the truth is, as much as I love you, I don’t know if you could be that woman.”

  Kelly looked at him. She let herself perch on the edge of the moment, as if on a diving board over a fathomless ocean. There could be no coming back. She decided. She said, “Would it help if I told you that I’m your daughter’s birth mother?”

  He stared at her as if she’d just gone mad. As if she’d just spoken in tongues. As if she were a stone angel who’d fallen off her pedestal and come to life.

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying that I told you the truth, but not the whole truth. I didn’t tell you that after René took my inheritance, a professor came to me with a proposition. He told me that if I would be a surrogate mother, and do it in complete privacy, he would arrange to see that I received fifty thousand dollars, enough for law school.”

  “George Hammond,” Randall said.

  The name jolted through her. So it really was true. “Yes. Professor Hammond.”

  They stared at one another, dumbstruck. Kelly whispered, “I held my daughter when she was born. She had a birthmark like a leaf on the left side of her neck.”

  “Tessa’s birthmark.”

  “Of course we could do DNA testing to be sure.”

  “This is too wild.” Randall rose. “I’ve got to walk.” Reaching down, he took Kelly’s hand and pulled her up.

  They set off up the hill, striding toward Fountain Avenue and Tulip Path, toward their mothers’ graves.

  “This changes everything,” Randall said.

  “Yes.” Kelly couldn’t stop smiling. “It does.”

  “It means we have to go at this slowly. Carefully. Very carefully.”

  Kelly frowned. “I don’t understand—”

  “Tessa has been wanting to meet her birth mother. I can’t just say, okay, here’s the woman I’m going to marry, and by the way, she’s your birth mother. We have to go about it the other way around. For her sake. That’s too fast. If it’s confusing for us, think how it will be for her. We have to let her meet you, and get to know you, and feel comfortable with you, and come to like you.”

  “You know, in Massachusetts the birth mother and both adoptee parents have to give their written permission before the identifying information can be released.”

  “God.” Randall ran his hand through his hair. “Anne won’t give her permission. Perhaps, if I’m awarded custody, I could speak to Anne about this from a position of strength.”

  “Perhaps.” Long shadows fell across their path. “Let’s see what Judge Spriggs decides. Then we’ll go from there.”

  “All right. Look,” Randall said, taking her by the arm. “I want to promise you—there’ll be no more women for me. No matter how tired or depressed or confused I get. I’ve learned who I want, and I’m certain about that now. So you can trust me. Okay?”

  She searched his face. She could not help herself: she loved this man. She had to trust him. They had to trust one another. “Want to seal your vow?” she asked lightly.

  And, not lightly, he kissed her.

  Wednesday afternoon in Courtroom 1, Kelly was at work again, sitting at her bench in her black robe, listening to a case between grandparents and father fighting for custody of a five-year-old boy. His parents had divorced when he was two, and his father had moved to another state. His mother had been ill for three years. During that time, the mother and the little boy had lived with his maternal grandparents. Now the mother had died and the father wanted to take his son with him to another state. But the little boy had seldom seen his father for five years. He knew his grandparents’ house and neighborhood as his home. He loved his grandparents, who were young and healthy.

  They were grief-stricken at the thought of losing him. Yet the father had legal rights of custody. It was another heartbreaking case.

  That afternoon, in Courtroom 5, Randall Madison and Anne Madison stood in rigid attention before Judge Spriggs.

  “Look, Mrs. Madison, Dr. Madison,” Judge Spriggs said. “You are both good parents. You’re both civilized, capable, and loving. I don’t know why you’re here in the first place. Seems to me you should have been able to figure this out yourselves. But you’re here, and I’ve heard all your witnesses and read all your documents and I’m not going to take up anybody’s time with this. Your daughter, Tessa, is a twelve-year-old girl. She’s on the verge of puberty. She’s been living in one house all her life, and that’s home to her, that’s where she’s safe. Now, Dr. Madison, you’re a fine parent, too”—she waved an admonishing finger at Anne—“and I don’t care how many women you sleep with, it seems to me you’re not letting that interfere with your parenting of Tessa. Still. Still, I think it’s in the best interest of this child to remain with her mother in the house where she’s been raised. I’m granting joint legal custody to the parents, and sole physical custody to the mother.”

  Judge Spriggs continued speaking, talking about the mother’s responsibility to discuss health and educational matters with the father, but Anne didn’t really hear her. She was so relieved, so exhilarated, so triumphant, that blood rushed through her ears like the applause of thousands. She had won, she thought. She had won.

  For the kids who attended the public schools, classes had begun, but Tessa’s private school didn’t start until next week. She was glad. It was an enormous relief to be allowed to stay at home with Carmen while her mother and father were in court. While she waited to see who would be awarded custody of her.

  Awarded. As if she were some kind of prize.

  Actually, she felt like that’s what she was to her mother, like a kind of badge, or one of those fancy medallions that royalty wore hanging from a scarlet sash over a satin gown. She was an accomplishment of Anne’s, an ornament Anne could display to the public as one more bit of evidence that she was a magnificent woman.

  Tessa lay in her room on her bed, reading and trying not to mess up the comforter too much. She was deep into a book called Misty Midnight, about an ill-tempered orphan girl sent to live on a farm where she develops a relationship with a tempestuous colt no one could break. It was one of Tessa’s favorite books, and for a while during the day she’d been able to lose herself in it, she’d been there, in the barn, smelling the sweet hay, hearing the huff of the colt’s breath on her neck, feeling the danger of the large, unhappy, unpredictable animal so near to her own cranky and fragile self.

  But now it was after five, and she was trapped in the Ice Palace waiting for the Ice Queen, who would be home soon.

  Then she heard the sound of tires against gravel. And a different engine humming. Two doors slammed. Two cars. Her mother and father.

  Tessa smoothed her shirt and brushed her hair. She heard voices downstairs, her mother talking with Carmen. The front door shut: Carmen had left.

  “Tessa?” her mother called up the stairs. “Could you come down, please?”

  And Tessa knew.

  Her mother’s voice in all its variations was as familiar to Tessa as her own weather system of moods. Her mother didn’t even have to say words, she could call out the Declaration of Independence and Tessa would know how to translate it. Her mother’s voice could be as light as a butterfly dipping through flowers when she was happy, and that was the way it sounded now.

  Tessa trudged down the stairs.

  Her parents were in the living room. Her mother was at the drinks cart, fixing a pair of vodka tonics over ice in cut-crystal glasses. Her father sat on a sofa, elbows on knees, hands hanging down, shoulders slumped. When he saw Tessa, he sat up straight and smiled.

  “Hey, Tessa,” he said. “How’s it going?”

  She shrugged and gave him a black look. What did you do wrong? she wanted to demand. Why didn’t you win? Didn’t you try hard enough? Didn’t you want to bad enough?

  Her mother was squeezing a slice of lemon into each glass. “Would you like some juice, Tessa?” her mother asked sweetly.

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “Sit down for a moment, dear. We want to talk to you.”

  Tessa perched on the end of a chair next to her father. Her mother handed him his drink, then sat across the coffee table from him on the smaller sofa her mother called a loveseat. Loveseat, hah.

  “It’s official, Tessa,” her mother announced. “Your father and I have been granted a divorce.” Her cheeks were flushed as she looked over at Randall and raised her glass in a toast. “Cheers.”

  “Cheers,” Randall replied, raising his glass as well.

  Her mother sipped her drink and smiled at Tessa. “And the judge has awarded full physical custody to me.”

  Tessa sat still. Nothing she could say or do would make a difference.

  “But joint legal custody to both of us,” her father hastened to add. “Which means that on any important decision, about where you go to school, or trips, or religion, or should you want rhinoplasty—”

  Anne cut him short. “This is not a joke, Randall!”

  “No. No, I know it’s not. I was just—” Randall looked down at his drink, then up at Tessa. “Honey, I’m still going to be as much a part of your life as before. Maybe more so.”

  “But I won’t live on the farm? I won’t have my room there?”

  “Of course you’ll have your room there. And you’ll live there sometimes. I’ve got liberal visitation rights—that means I can have you stay with me a lot, Tessa. At least two weekends a month, maybe more.”

  “The judge left it to us to decide,” Anne added. “Sometimes in cases like this, the child spends one school night with the noncustodial parent, but it’s such a long drive for you from Concord in to your school that Randall and I have agreed it would be best for you to spend all school nights here, and most weekends with your father and grandfather.”

  “But I’ll come in to take you out to dinner during the week. Or drive you to school events, that sort of thing—whatever you want. And I’ll be allowed to have you with me for entire months in the summer,” Randall hastened to add. “And for holidays.”

  “Some holidays,” Anne corrected. “We’ll decide as we go along.”

  “Are you going to keep your apartment?” Tessa asked her father.

  “I don’t think so, honey. I want to move out to the farm. I’m cutting back on all my hours. I might even close my practice here and open up a smaller one in Concord.”

  “Basically, your life won’t change much at all, darling,” Anne said. “Except that you’ll probably see more of your father than you used to.”

  “Do you have any questions?” Tessa’s father asked.

  Tessa shook her head.

  “You know we both love you, Tessa,” Anne assured her. “And we’ll try very hard to see that you’re happy. I know it will be hard, at first, having divorced parents, but many of your friends have parents who are divorced, don’t they?”

  Tessa nodded her head obediently.

  Randall drained his glass, put it on the coffee table, and rose. “Well, then, I guess I’ll go.”

  “Have a date?” Anne asked archly.

  “Yes. With my father.” Randall knelt in front of Tessa and hugged her to him. “I’ll see you this weekend, kid. I’ll call you tomorrow night. And you call me whenever you want, right?”

  She nodded.

  “Okay, then.”

  “I’ll walk you to the door.” Anne rose.

  They left the room. Tessa sat alone. Anne’s perfume lingered in the air, and a kind of shadow form of Tessa’s father remained as well. She’d always liked having him in the house. He was like a live, hungry animal rambling around in a museum. He was like a steady throb of rock music after the polite fussiness of Mozart. He was like a great big McDonald’s meal with a hot fudge sundae from Friendly’s instead of a tossed salad and a chicken breast. It was irrational, Tessa knew that much, but when she heard the door shut and then the engine start up in the driveway, she felt abandoned by her father. She felt angry, and lonely, and cold.

  “Well!” her mother said, returning to the living room. “Let’s go out to dinner and celebrate!” She smiled at Tessa—then suddenly swooped down and hugged her. “I’m so glad I’ll have you with me.” Taking Tessa’s face between her hands, she asked, “You’re glad, too, aren’t you, darling?”

  Sick at heart, Tessa nodded.

  “Lovely. Well, run up and put on a dress, why don’t you, and we’ll be off to dinner.”

  Fourteen

  SUNDAY MORNING, AT THE CEMETERY, Randall said, “We’ve got to stop meeting like this.”

  Laughing, Kelly stepped out of her car and walked over the Jeep. “Sorry I’m late. I had to drop Felicity at the mall.”

  Randall kissed her firmly. “I’m serious. We do have to stop meeting like this.”

  “And do what instead?”

  Randall took his hand in hers as they strolled along the winding cemetery paths. “Meet in public. Meet at your apartment. I want to get to know Felicity—how does she like school?”

  “She loves it. She’s making friends, and at the parent-teacher conference the other night, her teachers told me she’s exceptionally bright. She’s just got to learn to concentrate, and it looks like I’ve got to be the one to make her turn off the TV and apply herself.”

  “Well, I want to meet her. I want her to know I’m more than a voice on the telephone.”

  “Oh, she knows that. I’ve told her I’ve got a new man in my life.”

  “Good. And I want you to come out to the farm and meet Mont. I’ve told him about you.”

  “Oooh, scary, meeting your dad,” Kelly said, only half joking.

  “More scary than meeting my child?”

  Kelly shook her head. “Even the thought of that takes my breath away. Look.” Kelly pointed to an ancient spreading maple. “The leaves are already beginning to turn.” They stood together looking up at the beauty change had wrought, the yellow and gold gilding the green. “How is Tessa?”

  “I’m not sure. Anne’s had her with her pretty much full-time for the final leg of the campaign.”

  “I saw them both on television. Anne’s a brilliant speaker, and I must say I like her ideas.”

  “The primary’s this Tuesday. Anne agreed that if I let her have Tessa with her for these past two weeks, I’d get Tessa for the full week of Thanksgiving holiday.”

  “So you two are negotiating and working things out. That’s good.”

  “Spoken like a judge.”

  Kelly looked up at him. “And like a—relative. One who knows the best environment for a child is one in which the parents cooperate rather than fight.”

  “If Anne wins, I think she’ll be more receptive to our news.”

  “I’ve been thinking, Randall, what if I spoke with Anne?”

  “Wow.” Randall shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  “As one mother to another.”

  “But do you honestly feel like a mother?” Randall asked.

  Kelly hesitated, then asked, “Do you honestly feel like a man who can be faithful to one woman for the rest of his life?”

  By five o’clock Tuesday afternoon, Anne Madison knew she’d won the primary. No matter how many more votes came in, she’d already received such a landslide over the incumbent that Marshall O’Leary had just called her to congratulate her on her win.

  At her campaign headquarters on Mass Ave, a celebration was already in full swing. Rebecca Prentiss was there, and Lillian Doolittle, and Eleanor Marks, and Adelaide Stein, and thirty or so others, men and women who had helped her in her campaign. Mick Aitkins, the videographer, helped Rebecca bring in the iced case of champagne and the rented flutes Anne had waiting in her car. Now the air was full of the sound of popping corks.

  “You can have a sip,” Anne told her daughter. “Just a little celebratory sip.”

  “Okay, Mother,” Tessa replied.

  Anne smiled down at Tessa, a picture-book child with her long hair and her pink dress. Anne was letting her stay up late tonight even though tomorrow was a school day. Tonight was her mother’s victory celebration, after all. Besides, Anne could do pretty much whatever she wanted with Tessa’s schedule.

  Rebecca approached, a silver tray in her hand.

  “Have a canapé, darling,” Anne urged her daughter.

  Very quietly, Tessa said, “I don’t like caviar.”

  “Oh, but of course you do! Or if you don’t, you should. It is a bit of an acquired taste, I admit, but you’re old enough to begin acquiring it.” Plucking a caviar-covered cracker off the tray, Anne handed it to her daughter. “Come on, darling. Eat it.”

  Tessa obeyed. She choked. Her face went white.

  Don’t you dare vomit out here in public, Anne thought. Leaning down, she whispered, “Go to the bathroom.” She gave her daughter a little shove in the right direction. Tessa went off just in time.

  “Kevin! Darling! How good of you to stop by! Have some champagne.”