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always known. Until now.
    In the last months, she had found that a
lifetime of having all the answers had made it difficult to ask
questions. She was finding that being so adept at solving others
problems, even those that they failed to recognize, did little to
help her solve her own.
    Leave? Give in? Accept? Change? Push Bill
out? Pull him in? Push desire out? Change it? Adopt? Finish the
degree? Teach? Day care? Nurse? Divorce?
    Dilly had been mothering something ever since
she was a tiny child. It had made no difference whether it was her
progeny or not, whether of her species or not, whether it had
porcelain body, snag-looped terrycloth stuffed with batting, a coat
of fur and burrs, or the pinkest sweetest smelling skin. Dilly
Koster had mothered so much that she had forgotten how to be a
child. She had become so enamored of the heart-pounding rush of
relieving an infant’s hunger, of healing hurt, of answering
questions that she had forgotten how to tend her own wounds or feed
herself beyond stale marshmallows and pie crust. Being ever the
parent and never the child, questions came hard for Dilly and
answers weren’t heard.
    A car pulled up and stopped. Doors slammed
and excited voices carried in and swept away Dilly’s thoughts of
loss. She hurried to the front of the house. She spread her feet
wide and opened her arms in anticipation. Waiting eagerly, she ran
through her orders of the day.
    Sun-flushed daughters and son came through
the doorway in the order of their ages. Each held a limp sausage of
damp towel rolled around a wet bathing suit. All three grabbed a
quick hug from Dilly before veering off in all directions as if
they were planes in an aerial show.
    “Put those wet towels in the laundry room.
Hang those suits on the line.
    “Jessie, honey, Jessie, try to get a brush
through that mop. Did you hang your head out the window all the way
home?”
    “Dodger, Dodger, Uppy is going to be in bunny
heaven soon if you keep forgetting to feed him. He’s so weak a
tortoise could race right by him today.
    “Oh Kate, my Kate, I’m raising a raisin who’s
going to grow up to be a wrinkled prune. You’re going to look like
Mother Theresa before you’re twelve. Honey, didn’t you put on any
sun-block at all? Jessie, I’m holding you responsible for Kate’s
nose. If hers falls off because it’s so burned, the cost of a new
one’s coming out of your allowance. Kate, precious Kate, go grease
it with something. Anything. Crisco. Lemon oil. Put a piece of
bacon on it. Anything. Oh, baby, if it peels we’re going to have to
leave it home when we go to Mop and Pop’s this weekend. How far did
you swim today? To China?”
    “Almost, Mummy.”
    Kate rubbed her slightly reddened nose in the
soft cotton shirt and softer flesh of her mother’s belly before
running toward the back of the house to rid herself of her
laundry.
    “Kate?”
    A pause.
    “Kate?”
    From the back of the house came a voice edged
with suspicion, “Yes, Mummy?”
    “Can you pick us some very, very pretty
flowers for dinner?”
    “Yes, Mummy.”
    The conversation continued for another minute
as, yelling back and forth through the walls and rooms that
separated them, Dilly defined very, very pretty and Kate
reluctantly agreed that the round, reddish, spiky head of a
petal-less gaillardia was not pretty.
    As she walked to the kitchen to prepare
dinner, Dilly, surrounded by noise and filled with purpose, felt as
momentarily joyous as a junkie with a fix.

Chapter 3
     
     
    Nita Koster, Dilly’s thirty-three year old
sister, wished that Dan Herlick, the lawyer sitting opposite her at
the small scarred conference table, would fix his collar. Herlick
was so intent upon showing his clients how masterful he was he
hadn’t even noticed that the left tab of his unbuttoned collar tab
was jabbing his throat every time he gesticulated. Normally, a
residential real estate closing might take forty-five minutes. This
one was pushing two hours.
    The