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moment.
    “Chelsea, let’s go!” her mother called from downstairs. Something had changed her mother’s mood; she sounded tense. She’d been like this—normal one minute, short and edgy the next. Chelseafound things went better if she pretended not to notice. She was good at that.
    H ow could it be three-thirty? How did the days pass in this hectic rush? There was a moment after Kate had returned from dropping the kids off at school or at their various summer camps when the light in the house was golden and the day seemed to stretch before her with the endless possibilities of what she could accomplish. And then before she knew it, it was eleven. And then it was two. By three she was in the car again to get them both and cart them around to their myriad activities.
    She wasn’t idle. She was never idle. And yet it never seemed like there was any progress made on any of the bigger things she had planned. Sure, the house was spotless, the laundry was always done, dinner was always prepared, the fridge was always stocked with what everyone liked and needed. She did all that. She took care of her family. It was just that she couldn’t assign any real value to those tasks. They were baseline, the things that needed to be accomplished in order for her not to be a complete failure at the major role of her life. Not that she didn’t accomplish things—she was active in the school, in the organic-produce co-op. In fact, this past year she’d accomplished a great deal. But it didn’t seem like enough.
    “Chelsea, let’s go!” she called. She didn’t mean to sound tense, though she knew she did.
    A minute later, her daughter glided down the stairs. Kate felt a familiar twist as she looked at Chelsea, who had no idea how beautiful she was and was all the more beautiful for it. Sometimes when Kate looked at the swell of Chelsea’s hips, the milk of her skin, the golden flax of her hair, she felt afraid. She wanted to wrap her daughter up in cloth and hide her from the world; she longed for burkas and nunneries and sumptuary laws. How could you ever protect anything so lovely? How could you keep the dirty hands of the world away fromsomeone so desirable? You couldn’t. That was the sad truth. All you could do was teach her to protect herself.
    “What’s wrong?” her daughter asked from the bottom of the stairs. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
    “Nothing,” Kate said. She forced a bright smile and touched her daughter’s perfect cheek. “I’m not looking at you any particular way. We’re late.”
    Chelsea drifted past Kate, wafting behind her the scents of talcum powder, shampoo, Ivory soap. They were the clean, innocent aromas of childhood. Something about that made Kate feel calmer. She followed her daughter out to the car.
    “You know, I’m not thrilled about the whole mall thing,” Kate said, fastening her seat belt.
    “What’s wrong with the mall?”
    What was wrong with the mall? It was a bastion of mass consumerism, a pusher of junk food, the natural habitat of every pervert, predator, and abductor, and a preferred target of terrorists (according to the news). And wasn’t there some recent newsmagazine show about how kids were having sex in the bathrooms? They were locating each other with some phone app and hooking up. She hoped that was an urban legend. She couldn’t bring herself to ask Chelsea about it.
    “It’s just an inorganic way to spend a Friday afternoon,” Kate said. “And we’re leaving on Sunday. We need to start getting ready tonight.”
    The mere thought of it made her stomach clench. The trip. The dreaded trip. Its looming presence was pressing down on her, making her edgy and snappish with Sean and the kids.
    “You know, Mom,” said Chelsea. Her daughter was too wise, knew Kate too well, to be fooled by those lame reasons for not wanting Chelsea to hang out at the mall. “The incidence of stranger crime is at an all-time low. Mall abductions and murders are a