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pair of sweatpants? Or something speckled with paint?” She chuckled. “You’re a card, darling. You remind me of your father’s Aunt Edna who thought she was an opera diva and ended up in a mental hospital in Wichita Falls, singing Aida to her padded walls.”
    I reminded her of an insane (and deceased) great-aunt?
    Super.
    “You’d better hurry, sweetie, I’ve got a date at the salon in about an hour, so I won’t be home much longer.”
    “Mother, really, I don’t need a dress . . . Mother? ”
    The dial tone hummed in my ear.
    I swallowed a lump of yogurt and felt it slime its way down my throat to my belly. How had that happened?
    Unbelievable.
    I held the receiver for a moment, simply staring at it, amazed that I’d let myself get snared in yet another of Mother’s webs. You’d think I’d have known better, but it was like Groundhog Day , the movie with Bill Murray, where the same things occurred over and over again. I’d say “like a broken record,” only nobody had records anymore, just CDs with antiskid mechanisms.
    Frustration bubbled inside me, and I seriously considered dialing Mother back and telling her exactly what she could do with the designer dress and chauffeured car, but that was the wrong approach entirely. I had to deal with this directly, take a stand for myself, like Daddy had always advised.
    “Be a woman, not a weenie.”
    Okay, my father hadn’t exactly put it that way, but I knew that’s what he’d meant.
    This was one of those situations that called for the Band-Aid approach. Better to rip it off in one quick yank than tug a little bit at a time.
    I turned off Yo-Yo, grabbed my keys and headed down to Mother’s house on Beverly Drive.

Chapter 3
    A h , summer in Dallas.
    Not exactly tourist season.
    The days averaged a hundred degrees. Cloudless blue skies stretched from one horizon to the next, providing no relief from the blistering rays. Baking asphalt sent waves of heat simmering like a mirage. The sidewalks emptied, turning neighborhoods into ghost towns. Folks with any sense stayed inside and donned cardigans over T-shirts, the AC set to “arctic,” not budging until the first cool front in October.
    I tried to tell myself that it wasn’t really that hot.
    Mind over matter, see?
    It worked for all of about a minute, until I touched the door handle of my Jeep, shimmering beneath the sun in the shadeless parking lot. I muttered, “ouch, ouch,” under my breath as I got inside as fast as possible, still not prepared for the unbearably hot air that smothered me like an invisible electric blanket.
    While the AC in my Wrangler took its time to cool off, the back of my bare legs stuck to the leather and trickles of sweat swam down my back. The steering wheel scorched my skin, so I couldn’t bear to touch it with more than the tips of two fingers. I was already longing for Christmas, praying for an early frost.
    As if.
    Maybe tunes would help, I thought and turned on the radio, bypassing ads and chatter. After some poking around, I found an oldie by Alanis and sung at the top of my lungs, trying to take my mind off the perspiration sticking my shirt to my back.
    “ Life is a funny thing . . . isn’t it ironic, don’t you think ,” I crooned off-key and gazed out the windshield at the familiar route, though there wasn’t much in the way of scenery going south on Hillcrest from Belt Line, merely row after row of brick ranch houses, high board-on-board fences, occasional strip malls and shopping centers, gas stations, a deserted park (it was even too hot for kids to play).
    It took a good twenty minutes before I rolled into Highland Park, one of the city’s older residential areas and unquestionably one of its loveliest, with stately homes that reeked of old money, clipped green lawns with discreet inground sprinkler systems that went off in the wee hours to conserve water, and trees tall enough to provide shade, the thick boughs stretching above cobbled