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and to the pots of daisies surrounding it that were especially picturesque.
    Because I always wrap each of our toiletries separately in plastic wrap, Snow and I had a lot of unpeeling to do. This was how I happened to notice the only thing I didn’t like about our room, the disposable plastic bag form-fitted to the leather wastebasket and folded over the top.
    At the time of the trip Snow hadn’t yet had her growth spurt—as had many of her classmates—and her breasts were just beginning to bud. She was a tender sprout of a girl still, but clearly a beauty like her mom. That’s a joke but, in allseriousness, we do look alike and turn heads, and occasionally people kid Finn, “Are you sure you had anything to do with her?” It makes me laugh. She is pure Seddley. I have shown her a photograph of her great-grandmother Charlotte Seddley as a child to prove it—wide-set gray eyes with a penetrating, I might even say hypnotic, gaze, a heart-shaped face with a delicate pointed chin. I had worried that her nose would be a lump like Aunt Janny’s, but it has narrowed to aristocratic elegance. Her lips are thin (Finn’s contribution, his Irish heritage), thank goodness not horrible and measly like a keyhole, which some of his relatives have, only a mite less plump than might be optimum. She is reserved in manner, part of her shyness, and rarely surrenders to extremes like a fit of giggles. Her smiles are modest, lips together. Most often I see her even, perfect teeth when she brushes them, a slight exaggeration. Of course I should not forget to mention the Seddley crowning glory: thick, straight twenty-four-karat-gold hair.
    We are a pair.
    When she was a baby, she had the softest, loopiest curls. While she slept I would lean over her crib and twirl one around my finger. I keep this in my memory bank filed under moments of pure happiness. Snow in her crib, safe and sound, her heart beating. I always checked to make certain of that.
    Sometimes I think about the mother of that Lindbergh child, kidnapped, snatched at night, or the mother of Elizabeth Smart, the Mormon girl. The stark raving horror of an empty bed. The helplessness. The shriek. I imagine it went on forever. Even when that mother had stopped screaming, she was still screaming. Weare different, mothers, because we understand the terror of that possibility.
    The day after I gave birth to Snow—at 5:58 p.m., November 22—and Finn was bounding up and down the corridor inviting the nurses to the restaurant for a free meal, I spiked a fever of 104. They stabbed me with an IV and pumped me with antibiotics. They never did understand the cause, but I knew it was dread. The dread of realizing how vulnerable I now was, the fearsome responsibility of having a baby and keeping her safe.
    In Rome that first evening, while I brushed her hair, which I love to do, I kept up a patter about what we might eat for dinner, the sights we would see tomorrow. I always do that. Preparation lessens anxiety, that’s my belief. Snow bit her nails. I shouldn’t mention that. It makes her sound like a little animal and not the graceful preteen she is. But, and I do hope she grows out of it, she does bite her nails to the nub. This is all part of what her pediatrician diagnosed, when she was five, as extreme shyness syndrome. Finn said,
Bullshit
. He said it right to the doctor. Brenda, who is outspoken—that’s the most polite way to describe my mother-in-law—backed Finn up. She said she’d never heard anything so quacked.
    “You want to wear my earrings,” I said to Snow. It wasn’t a question. I can often read her thoughts. I had bought the tiny platinum crosses studded with diamonds at Tiffany. I always tell people that they were an engagement present from Finn, and they were, but from myself to me. Snow was too young for them, but given the special occasion, our first night in Rome, “Stay still,” I told her. An unnecessary admonishment as I’venever known Snow to fidget in