“You’re in good spirits,” Jason remarked.

  “Yes, I am,” she agreed, darting away from him in a burst of speed and then zipping back. Jason thought her good mood resulted from her recent appointment to the Massachusetts judiciary—and it did, really. Mostly. She was proud of the appointment and excited about it; it was the most important thing in her life, something she had dreamed of achieving. But it was a serious thing, and right now, for some reason, she was simply buoyant with a kind of giddy happiness.

  She thought of falling that morning in the cemetery and of the man who’d offered his hand, so easily helping her up. “I thought an angel had fallen off her pedestal,” he’d said.

  The taping had been exhilarating for Anne, but as she drove home her mind moved relentlessly to thoughts of the week ahead. There was so much good needing done in the world, and right when she should be focusing on that, she had the meeting with the psychiatrist to consider. All because of Randall, damn him, and his stupid, selfish insistence on ruining Anne’s life.

  By the time she brought her BMW to a stop in the circle drive of her house she was shaking. Thank God, she thought as she stepped from the heat into the cool front hall, for this pale palace that rose around her like a medieval cloister. Shutting the front door firmly behind her, taking solace in the determined click of the lock, she leaned against it, taking deep breaths.

  The entrance hall always calmed her, its floor a cool streaked rose-and-green Italian marble, the newel post of the winding staircase a marble basket of flowers, perfect immutable flowers greeting her every time. Her grandparents looked down on her imperiously from the heavily framed age-darkened oil portraits hanging above the refectory table. She liked having these portraits here, where anyone entering the house knew at once from what kind of stock she descended.

  Thank you, Grandmother, she prayed. Thank you, Grandfather. They had had the foresight to leave her a trust her own parents could not break to squander on their beloved immigrants. True, Randall had paid for half the house, as well he should have, but quite probably he wouldn’t have agreed to buy such a place—he found it ostentatious, undoubtedly because it wasn’t shabby and smelling like wet dog like his parents’ home—if he hadn’t known that Anne could pay cash for the property herself, and would have done so, if necessary. Now Randall was gone, and she was even more glad to have a beautiful, serene, home for a haven. It made such a difference in her life.

  On the long refectory table against the wall rested two antique silver and marble epergnes, and between them a chased silver bowl. Over the years the family had gotten into the habit of dropping the mail here, and all messages. There was a note torn from his prescription pad, written in Randall’s distinct, direct, block writing—unusual for a doctor, but Randall was an unusual man—for Anne.

  Randall had taken Tessa off with him for the afternoon.

  Legally, it was within his rights to do so. It was understood when Randall left that Tessa would remain in this, Anne’s, house. She and Randall would discuss, day by day, in a cooperative manner, Tessa’s care, even though they were battling fiercely, each one of them, for sole legal custody.

  Anne had been so sure Randall’s departure was temporary. But the divorce, like an inexorable shredding machine, was grinding on, and Randall was driving it. She could not believe he was fighting her for custody of Tessa.

  A kind of trembling moved over her. This day was too much. First Rebecca making that stupid scheduling conflict so that she had to miss her own fund-raiser. Then Tessa making such a violent scene about having to wear a truly beautiful dress! Now Randall taking Tessa off to his filthy farm without her consent.

  Anne hurried up the stairs and into the safety of her own bedroom. Tearing off her clothes, she dropped them in the hamper in her pristine white bathroom and stepped into the shower. Using pHisoHex, the soap they used in hospitals, she scrubbed her limbs and torso, ten times, and shampooed her hair. Afterward, her skin was bright red, nearly raw.

  And still she did not feel clean enough. She did not feel purged.

  Randall had taken Tessa to visit her grandfather. On the farm. That filthy farm. Horseshit lay everywhere, and the cat was allowed to wander in and out of the house, catching rats, then with the same mouth and paws padding through the kitchen, licking Tessa’s hands. Anne hated the farm, hated it when Tessa went there. Hated it when Tessa came home, carrying into the house God only knew what sorts of germs and foul matter. When Tessa returned home, Anne would personally bathe Tessa herself, and shampoo her hair vigorously.

  How Randall, a physician, could allow Tessa to be exposed to such a plethora of germs, Anne just couldn’t understand. Anyone who had ever worked in a hospital, who had ever seen the wounded human flesh, would know vigilance was necessary in this world. Cleanliness was essential.

  Of course, it was a losing battle. Anne was aware of that. She was not a fool. As she pulled on clean, crisp clothes she admitted to herself that she was more intelligent than most people, and blessed with abundant energy and a keen perception. She intended to do her part to change the world for the better, but she would not let down her standards on the home front in the process.

  She would not be like Randall, who had promised to love and honor her, who vowed to change the world with her and then betrayed her.

  Who continued to betray her. Over and over again.

  Fortunate Tessa, spoiled Tessa, fussing because she had to wear a two-hundred-dollar dress when children all over the city were hungry, illiterate, ill clad. Tessa, whom she had ordered to stay in her room, gone. With Randall. To the farm. Leaving Anne only a note lying face-up in the silver bowl on the front hall table. (What if Anne hadn’t seen the note? She would be frantic with worry by now!)

  Anne stormed into Tessa’s room. Carmen had Sunday afternoons off, so it was up to Tessa to keep her room neat. Just for part of one day. Surely not too much to ask of a twelve-year-old.

  And Tessa had hung up the lovely, expensive, painstakingly sewn dress she’d worn to church and then so recklessly stripped off at noon. Her shoes were neatly tucked away into the shoe bag hanging on the inside of her closet door.

  With trembling hands, Anne opened one of the drawers of Tessa’s gilt-trimmed white bureau …

  … And found chaos, T-shirts and sweaters and sweatshirts, crumpled inside out, crammed and jumbled together like rags.

  How many times had she told Tessa to take proper care of her clothing? How often had she shown Tessa how her clothing must be folded when put away: face-down, divided into thirds lengthwise, the arms folded back and smoothed, then the shirt top lifted and brought back over the lower half, the collar arranged to lie just so, and all of it smoothed again. But no, Tessa had to just toss her things in any which way, as if they weren’t the best, most expensive clothes money could buy, while all around her thousands of poor girls wore hideous cast-offs, and ailing babies and old people in grave pain went without medicine.

  Oh, Anne was angry. Still, she set to work. As a nurse she knew that the slightest disorder could breed disaster, a milligram of medication, a moment without oxygen, could bring tragedy down upon one’s life.

  Tessa’s brush, silver-backed, part of a set Anne had bought for her daughter one year at Harrod’s in London, lay on the bureau next to the matching mirror. Long strands of blond hair gleamed, caught in the bristles. Anne shuddered as if those hairs were threaded in her throat. She hated hair. It was so unruly, pervasive, drifting everywhere, swirling like evil, just one hair making a web to catch dust and dirt.

  Dust, which bred germs, which bred illness, which bred death.

  She wasn’t able to bring herself to remove the hair from the brush. She’d tell Tessa to do it when she returned home.

  She felt more than heard the front door open.

  She flew down the stairs.

  “Tessa! Tessa, are you all right? How could you go off? Randall, how could you take her? Without my permission! Without even phoning first.”

  Randall stood with his hand resting on Tessa’s shoulder. They were both wearing jeans; both smelled of sunshine and sweet grass. “I did phone first. Tessa answered. You were gone. Even Carmen was gone.”

  Anne clutched Tessa by her shoulders. “Are you all right? Did you ride? Tell me the truth, did your father put you on a horse?” Without waiting for a reply, she spun toward Randall. “I have asked you—I have begged you—to keep her away from those horses. She could be injured. She could fall, have a concussion, break her spine, snap her neck—”

  “Anne, look at her. She’s here. She’s just fine.”

  He sounded so reasonable. How she hated him for this, for making her look irrational by contrast. And he was so very handsome, even though his shirt was rumpled and he needed a haircut and barn dust covered his boots.

  Randall. His clear blue eyes, his massive shoulders, his calm, bull-like confidence. Why couldn’t he continue to love her? She knew she got carried away sometimes. She knew she wasn’t easy to live with. But if she’d been a man, her wife would not only have dealt with her eccentricities, but also would have revered them as part of what made her unique.

  “You look tired, Anne,” Randall said.

  She sagged. “Yes. I am.”

  They were all still standing in the front hall. “Let’s go in the kitchen and have some tea,” Randall suggested.

  Her heart thumped. Perhaps he wanted to talk. He sounded friendly, conciliatory—“Yes. All right.”

  The routine movements of making tea soothed Anne. Boiling the water, warming the pot, setting out the flowered china cups and saucers. Here, in this room of scrubbed pine and polished chrome, Anne could relax. Carmen kept this room in perfect order.

  “How was the taping, Mom?” Tessa’s nose and cheeks were pink from the sun.

  Anne looked at her daughter. Her beautiful, healthy, fortunate child, gleaming with a body fed with the best substances, cleaned, groomed, loved, and educated.

  “It went well. My new slogan seems to be, ‘Vote for Anne Madison, for the health of it.’ ”

  Randall laughed. “That’s great, Anne. Catchy.”

  He sat at the place he’d always had when he still lived here, wearing clothes Anne knew as well as her own. The blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up, those khakis—his socks didn’t match. They were both white and both cotton, but not a pair. She thought of his rented apartment, his clothes neatly folded away in cheap new furniture, and shuddered.

  “I like it, too, Mom.”

  Anne poured the tea. “Good.”

  Randall rose and dug in the cupboard for the sugar. Anne eyed him disdainfully as he spooned it into his tea. “Tessa?” He nodded toward the sugar.

  “She doesn’t need it,” Anne snapped.

  Randall stirred his tea, sipped it, then said, in a companionable sort of way, as if he were discussing something minor, “Anne, you remember about the GAL appointment this week, don’t you?”

  She felt her mouth tighten. “Of course I remember. It’s not likely I’ll forget something as important as that.”

  “I’m only trying to be helpful. I know you’ve got a full schedule with your campaign.”

  Placated, Anne agreed. “True.” She brightened. “Let me try an idea out on you two. The videotaping gave me an idea: What if we could produce a television show, something fun and engrossing, like a sitcom, but incorporate into the plot all the simple things we’re trying to teach? Not drinking during pregnancy. Taking medication daily. Proper diet. That sort of thing.”

  “That’s a really cool idea, Mom!” Some of Tessa’s hair had come free from the braids and curled in the heat over her ears.

  “It is a good idea, Anne. You should pursue it.” Randall’s voice was warm.

  “Yes. Yes, I will.” Anne rose. “I need to get a pad and make some notes.” As she left the room, she looked back. “Randall, give Tessa some dinner if you haven’t already, will you? She can have a salad—there is lettuce and a cucumber in the refrigerator. Be sure to use the fat-free dressing; the other is Carmen’s. And a banana for dessert.”

  Randall’s voice cut through her instructions. “Anne. Tessa’s too thin—”

  “I’m not going to argue about this!” Anne snapped. “I am her mother.” She turned to Tessa. “Nothing else. I mean that, Tessa. And Tessa, if you’ve been at your grandfather’s farm, you must shower and shampoo your hair before you do anything else. Certainly before you eat. And use pHisoHex.”

  Tessa stood staring down at the floor.

  “Well?” Anne demanded.

  “Yes, Mom,” Tessa said.

  “That’s better.” Anne left them, hurrying over the plush pale ecru wall-to-wall carpet that sank like butter beneath her heels down the hall into the rose-and-cream room she claimed for her own. Here her antique white-and-gold desk awaited her, everything on it belonging there, everything dusted and ordered.

  Sinking into her leather chair, she folded her hands and took a deep breath. She touched, in ritual order, her white telephone, the small caller ID box, the thick Rolodex, and delicately moved her daily calendar a fraction of an inch, so that it was exactly in the center of her desk. She touched her tape dispenser, her stapler, the malachite box where she kept her stamps. She touched the pastel Lucite in and out boxes. Last, she set both hands on the silver-and-amethyst tray where her pens lay.

  Her blotter was centered perfectly on her desk. Everything gleamed. She thought how much she loved marble and other veined stones whose fissures and stains were incorporated to make an even more beautiful whole, the way a streak first caused by a virus gave new breeds of tulips stripes and speckles and flaws that were considered assets.

  She drew a yellow legal pad toward her and took up a pen. Her fingernails were glossy with a pale pink polish, nothing chipped. She would write a letter to her friend Natalie Henderson, who was in charge of public relations at the local PBS station.

  Taking a deep breath, Anne began to work. Here, in the familiar order of her study, she could begin to change the world.

  Tessa looked at her father across the pine table. “So you aren’t going to talk to her today? About me living with you?”

  “Sweetie …”

  “Dad, you promised. And you said you’d make her let me have a computer!” She blinked back angry tears. “Everyone breaks their promises.”

  Her father gave her a level look. “Would you like me to go talk with her right now?”

  Exasperated, Tessa bonked her head right down on the tabletop and tugged at her hair. She knew the worst thing to do was to interrupt her mother when she was working in her study. If her dad went to her mother’s study now there’d be a fight, and Tessa hated it when they fought.

  She gave the table leg a good solid kick. “Okay, fine.”

  “Tessa, remember what I told you on the way to the farm?”

  “What.”

  “Your mother and you and I are all going to speak with a man, a wise man, a psychiatrist, who knows all about families like ours, families involved in a divorce. He’s going to help us decide what’s best for you. The judge we saw told us we have to see this man, because it’s the best thing for you. After that, the judge will decide where you will live. Until then, it’s best for you to stay here.”

  “But that’s crazy. Come on, Dad—” Tessa squirmed. “Can’t you just make Mom let me live with you? I don’t want to talk to strangers about it. Mom would go crazy if she thought I’d told strangers—” She kicked the table leg again, frustrated with the convolutions of her own thinking. What she wanted was to be magically transported out of her mother’s house without her mother knowing that that was what Tessa wanted, so that it wouldn’t be Tessa who hurt her mother’s feelings.

  Did this make her a monster, that she wanted to leave her mother? Or a coward, that she couldn’t tell her? Something was wrong with Tessa, she knew. Sometimes she felt so angry and sad she thought she’d explode right out of her skin.

  “Oh, Tessa, I know this all seems complicated and difficult right now. But it will get straightened out soon. It really will.” He stood up. His hair fell over his forehead and was shaggy around his ears. His clothes were rumpled and a thread dangled from the hem of his shirt collar. “Honey, I’ve got to go. We’ll talk about this another time.”

  “Sure.” She stared down at the table.

  He came behind her and put his hands on her shoulders. “At least,” he said, bending down to whisper, “at least I took you to McDonald’s.”

  There were days when this would make her smile, days when she treasured the conspiracy between her and her father, because her mother would freak out if she knew Tessa had eaten there. McDonald’s, Dunkin’ Donuts, any of those fast-food places were the spawn of the devil as far as her mother was concerned. Not only would they make Tessa accumulate fat, it also would be a peculiar blobby fat that comes with empty calories, and it would make her face all zitty, too, from the grease.

  But today Tessa thought: So then why did her father, who was a doctor, take her there? It couldn’t be only, as her mother said, that he did it to spite her, to try to be the Disney parent, while she was left to enforce the standards of good health by herself.

  “Tessa,” her father said. “Honey.”

  “I want to meet my birth parents,” Tessa blurted out.

  He was standing behind her, so she couldn’t see his face, but she heard him inhale sharply and she felt him tense up. He came around to face her, pulling up a chair. He took her hands in his.

  “Why?”

  He looked so kind and worried, her dad, and all at once he looked tired and about three hundred years old. He’d given her such a perfect day.

  Her father had enough worries on his mind, she knew. A physician specializing in geriatrics, he saw lawyers, professors, and brilliant doctors he’d once studied under transformed by Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, cancer. He worked too many hours at the hospital and the clinic, and added to those hours by visiting his patients at their retirement homes, checking in on them. Sometimes he took Tessa with him, and usually she liked it. The old people were so nice, with skin as soft as her sheets and bright bird eyes. Sometimes they creeped her out, though—the ones who cried or tried to touch her.