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morning cigarette. “Cutting back to one a day is almost the same as quitting,” she’d said defensively. “And with what’s happened with your father, I need all the stress relief I can get, so don’t you dare judge me.” I imagined her sitting at the sunny breakfast bar in the airy, lakeside house I’d grown up in (that was about to be foreclosed), sipping tea from a bone china cup so thin it was almost translucent.
    “Well, no one ever said marriage was perfect. Why don’t you wait and see what happens? Maybe you’ll end up adoring this dog.”
    I tapped the brake as the car approached an intersection. “The dog is not the point, Mother. The point is, he lied to my face about having children. That’s fraud. That’s grounds for annulment.”
    She gasped. “Stella Rose, I don’t ever want to hear that word come out of your mouth again! Mark may not be perfect, but he loves you. He stuck with you through all that messiness with your father’s company—”
    By “messiness” she meant embezzlement and insider trading and an ongoing stint at a white collar prison, but I wasn’t allowed to let any of those words come out of my mouth, either.
    “—and he can provide for you.” I heard a clatter as she replaced the teacup in its saucer. “Let’s face it, darling, even if your father’s attorneys win the appeal, we just can’t take care of you the way we used to.”
    “I can take care of myself,” I insisted.
    Her laugh was brittle. “Oh, please. As an au pair?”
    “I was a nanny, Mom; don’t be pretentious. And for your information, I liked being a nanny. I loved the kids, and I made decent money.”
    “Stella.” She had put on her best Steel Magnolia voice. “The Goddards hired you as their au pair so you would have room and board while you went to college. They employed you as a favor because your father and Mr. Goddard go back to Princeton. But you are meant for better things than child care, darling.”
    “I’m meant to be a mom,” I said flatly. “AKA, full-time child care with no paycheck.”
    “You won’t need a paycheck; you’ve got Mark. And you’d be well advised to hold on to him. A good man is hard to find.”
    “You mean a rich man is hard to find.”
    “All I’m saying is, marriage takes compromise. Perhaps if you had taken my advice and majored in business or finance, we wouldn’t be having this discussion, but you insisted on studying, what was it? Early childhood development? And then you didn’t even finish your degree. You’ve put yourself in a very untenable position, and now you have to make the best of it.”
    I gripped the steering wheel even harder. “But he had a vasectomy, Mom! And he didn’t tell me until after the wedding. I mean, who does that in real life?”
    “Stella, what did I always tell you?”
    I sighed and repeated her worn-out old catchphrase: “You never know a man until you marry him.”
    “That’s right. Now, enough with the temper tantrums. Take the puppy and make the best of it.”
    “But he’s my husband!”
    “Exactly. And now you’re finding out what he’s really like. He’s a good man, but he’s still a man. You can’t expect too much.”
    Part of me wanted to reach right through the phone and strangle her. The other part was horribly afraid she was right. Maybe I should stop worrying about my needs and start focusing on his. How could I call him selfish when he gave me every single thing I asked for except a baby?
    I hung up and considered turning the car around and apologizing to Mark. For about two seconds. Then I stomped on the gas pedal and took a right on County Road 56. Mark had shown me who he really was; now it was my turn to show him.

6
CASEY
    I had just finished ringing up Mrs. Adelman’s purchase—fifty-five cans of cat food for her ever-growing band of ferals and strays—when Dr. Porter’s new wife walked in. We hadn’t actually been introduced, but the whole town had been buzzing about her ever since