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phrase but then stopped herself. Hermother, after all, had a right to be happy. Connie could admit that her own life choices might seem incomprehensible to an outside observer, and doubly so to one as critical of established institutions as Grace was. Grace must have wondered how she ended up with such an alien offspring, and yet she had always supported Connie’s choices in her own unorthodox way.
    Grace probably tried terribly hard to remember that today was her exam day. She had never tried to insist that Connie not study history, not be bookish, not be serious and orderly. Grace occasionally wished that Connie would “investigate her soul truth,” but Connie always interpreted that as a hippie way of saying that Connie should just do what seemed right for her.
    Connie placed her empty mug on the floor and reached for the telephone.
    It rang four times, and as Connie was about to hang up, the receiver rose with a clatter and a breathless voice said, “Hello?”
    “Mom?” said Connie. “Hi! Liz left a note that you had called. I hope it’s not too late.” Her eyes lit up with a rising warmth of affection for this odd woman with whom life had yoked her together. Over the past year or so, Connie had invented more reasons to telephone, leaving messages peppered with questions; the ostensible need for answers carried a built-in need to call back. Her garden usually provided a good excuse.
    “Oh, Connie!” Grace cried with relief. “Yes! Yes, I did call. No, this is perfect. Good. How are you, my darling?”
    “Great!” she said, bursting. “I’m great, I guess. Kind of drained, obviously. I mean, today was a pretty big day.”
    “Was it?” Grace said, the sound of her rummaging through a box of something noisy chinking down the telephone line.
    “Well, yeah,” Connie said, her smile slipping a little. “My qualifying exam?” she prodded. The rummaging sound continued. “I left you messages about it. That huge exam that I had to take to be advanced to candidacy?” Still Grace said nothing, the air coming in short bursts through her nostrils as she toted the unseen box across the kitchen of her adobe house.
    “The thing I have been preparing for an entire year to take?” Connie said, anger and hurt pinching her face. Her brows crumpled together overher nose. Without realizing it she got to her feet, as if standing would bring the point home to Grace more clearly. “It was today, Grace,” she said, her voice devolving into the same stern, disappointed chill that it used to have when Connie was a teenager. She pressed her lips together, suppressing the urge to cry, to yell, or do anything else that would suggest that she needed to center herself.
    “Indeed,” said Grace indifferently, shuffling the phone from one ear to the other. “Now listen, my darling. I have a very important favor to ask you.”

CHAPTER THREE
    Marblehead, Massachusetts
Early June
1991
    “I STILL CAN’T BELIEVE SHE DID IT,” SPAT C ONNIE . S HE ROLLED THE window down on her side of the car and chucked out a withered apple core that had been sitting on the dashboard.
    “I still can’t believe you’re letting it get to you this much,” said Liz mildly, peering at the map accordioned across her lap. “You should veer right up here.”
    “How could I have let her talk me into this?” Connie growled, the right front wheel well of her rust-speckled Volvo sedan quaking in protest as she turned.
    Liz inhaled an exasperated sniff of air through her nose before saying, “You know, you didn’t have to agree to it. You’re trying to put all thison Grace, but I don’t see her twisting your arm—”
    “Always,” continued Connie before Liz was finished. “It’s always like this! She has some disaster, and no matter what I happen to be doing, I haveto drop everything and pick up the pieces. You’d think after twenty-five years of self-actualization she’d be able to manage her own mess. ” Connie downshifted as the Volvo