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figure out my deception, I run to my bedroom and grab my black pants outfit from the closet. I dress quickly and then find a hole in all the sticky notes I’ve pasted on the bathroom mirror. There must be fifty little rectangles of yellow paper stuck to the mirror, each note holding reminders written in my scrawling hand. I peer through the one available spot to stick my face and slide on my lipstick.
    Written upon each little piece of paper are the same words: Don’t forget about Wednesday .
    I vow future efficiency and write a note to buy more sticky notes. I poke it in the only available hole.
    Breathlessly, I rush back to the living room where Allison has been thumbing through the latest People magazine she apparently brought with her. For a few moments, we bicker about who will drive. In the end, I win. My car, although slightly older and less prestigious than Allison’s bronze Lexus convertible, contains the one thing that always sways my daughter‌—‌it has satellite radio, which means we can listen to music without commercial interruption.
    I drive to our favorite Chinese restaurant, The Bamboo Café , my ears stinging with some classic rock Allison has dialed in. I’m sure the pounding rhythm disrupts my natural heartbeat; the volume makes my fragile eardrums vibrate in protest. The drive takes only a few minutes, still I’m relieved when we pull into a parking spot.
    Inside, we settle into a booth and order beverages while we look over the menu. Soon, I’m sipping a glass of plum wine, which finally settles my thumping heart and allows me to take in the loveliness and liveliness of my daughter. She roars through a glass of Tsing Tao , waving to the waitress for one more, each.
    “So, Mom, I was thinking,” Allison says, her voice round and husky as she takes a breath from her beer. “What would you say about going to Canada this summer?”

Chapter Four
    A llison looks at me with wide-as-an-ocean eyes that are never refused. I wonder if that could be one reason why she’s now divorced. An uncompromising woman rarely fits for long within the confining curve of an ungenerous man’s hands.
    To be fair, I recall Jim Colson was generous with his money, but stingy with the one thing Allison needed from him‌—‌devout attention to her every whim. Outwardly, she was the caricature of a successful older man’s wife: young, beautiful, blonde, and seemingly aloof. But Allison possessed the one thing that belies a trophy wife‌—‌she loved him fiercely and without compromise.
    By all accounts, when she discovered his playful notions with other women, she handled the situation with her chin in the defiant pose of one not to be discarded. In the end (and most likely because of that pointedly strong chin), he left her with a large settlement that nevertheless did nothing to restore her innocence or trust.
    I suppose it was during the tumult of Allison’s divorce when we silently agreed to cast off our mother-daughter roles and strike up a friendship with our weekly La La La dinners and tight-as-twins secret language. Perhaps I should have kept my distance from such nonsensical girly behavior, but a mother’s compulsion to fix her children’s boo-boos doesn’t necessarily end when they’re grown.
    During Allison’s unfortunate divorce, our conversations changed; we collapsed the difference in our ages and began to wildly regard each other as joyful, newfound friends. I lifted my daughter up as my colleague with the altruistic purpose of easing her shame. She, in turn, sacrificed for herself whatever motherly wisdom I might have provided, while replacing it with a giggly girlfriend. I thought our new arrangement might be only temporary, but it lingered and stuck.
    It works for us.
    Since my widowhood and Allison’s divorce, we’ve made it our habit to take unusual vacations together; the distraction of obscure places is as much a goal as the destination. One year we cruised through the Panama Canal.