Izzy slipped her hand in his. “It’s okay, Daddy. She knows.”

He pulled her into his arms and held her, looking up at the sky through hot, stinging tears. I have her, Kath—the best part of us—and I’ll always be here for her.

They placed a wicker basket full of blooming chrysanthemums on the grass, then drove home.

“I’m gonna check the garden,” Izzy said when they pulled into the driveway.

“Don’t be long. It looks like it’s going to rain.”

Nodding, she got out of the car and made a beeline to the white picket fence. Nick slammed the door shut and headed for the house. Sure enough, it started to rain before he reached the porch.

“Daddy, Daddy, come here, Daddy!”

He turned. She was standing in front of the cherry tree they’d planted last year. She was hopping up and down like an agitated bird, flapping her arms.

He raced across the yard. When he reached her, she looked up at him, grinning, her face washed by rain. “Look, Daddy.”

Nick saw what she was pointing at, and slowly he dropped to his knees in the already moist grass.

The cherry tree had produced a single, perfect pink bud.

Autumn brought color back to Southern California. Brown grass began to turn green. The gray air, swept clean by September breezes, regained its springtime blue. The local radio stations started an endless stream of football chatter. The distant whine of leaf blowers filled the air.

It was the season of sharp, sudden changes: days of bright lemon heat followed by cold, starlit nights. Sleeveless summer shirts were packed away in boxes and replaced by crew-neck sweaters. The birds began one by one to disappear, leaving their nests untended. To the Californians, who spent most of their days in clothes as thin as tissue and smaller than washrags, it began to feel cold. They shivered as the wind kicked up, plucking the last dying red leaves from the trees along the road. Sometimes whole minutes went by without a single car turning toward the beach. The crossroads were empty of tourists, and only the stoutest of spirit ventured into the cool Pacific Ocean at this time of year. The stream of surfers at the state beach had dwindled to a few hardy souls a day.

It was time now to let go. But how did you do that, really? Annie had spent seventeen years trying to protect her daughter from the world, and now all of that protection lay in the love she’d given Natalie, in the words she’d used in their talks, and in the examples she’d provided.

The examples.

Annie sighed, remembering the talk she’d had with Natalie and the disappointment she’d felt in realizing that she hadn’t been a good role model. Now it was too late to change all that she’d been and done as a mother. Annie’s time was over.

“Mom?” Natalie poked her head into Annie’s bedroom.

“Hey, Nana,” she answered, trying to inject cheerful-ness into her voice. “Come on in.”

Natalie climbed onto the bed and stretched out alongside Annie. “I can’t believe I’m really going.”

Annie put an arm around her daughter. Surely this beautiful creature couldn’t be the child who’d once licked the metal ski-chair pole at Mammoth Mountain . . . or the girl who’d climbed into her parents’ bed after a nightmare when she was only a year away from being a teenager.

Seventeen years had passed in the blink of an eye. It was too fast. Not long enough . . .

Idly, Annie finger-combed her daughter’s long blond hair. She’d been preparing for this day for ages, almost since she’d first dropped Nana off at kindergarten, and still she wasn’t ready. “Have I told you today how proud I am of you?”

“Only a billion times.”

“Make it a billion and one.”

Natalie snuggled closer and pressed a hand to Annie’s stomach. “How were the latest stress tests and ultrasounds?”

“Everything shows a healthy baby girl. There’s nothing for you to worry about.”

“She’s lucky to have you for a mom.”

Annie laid her hand on Natalie’s. There were so many things she wanted to say, on this day when her daughter was embarking on the adventure of her own life, but she knew that she had had her time. Everything of magnitude that was hers to say had been said, and if it hadn’t, it was too late now. Still, she wished she could think of one single, flawless bit of advice to hand down like an heirloom to her child.

Natalie leaned against her. “What are you going to do while I’m gone?”

Gone. Such a hard, cold, uncompromising word. It was like death, or divorce. Annie swallowed. “Miss you?”

Natalie turned to her. “Remember when I was little . . . you always used to ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up?”

“I remember.”

“What about you, Mom? What did you used to tell Grandpa Hank when he asked you the same question?”

Annie sighed. How could she make Natalie understand what Annie herself had only figured out this year, after almost forty years of living? Hank had never asked his only daughter that question. He’d been a lonely, lost single father, caught between the decades of Donna Reed and Gloria Steinem, and he had taught his daughter that a woman was defined by the men around her. He had been taught, and so he believed, that girls didn’t need dreams for the future— those were for little boys, who would grow up to run businesses and make money.

Annie had made so many mistakes, and most of them had been because she’d planted herself firmly in the middle of the road. But now she knew that life without risk was impossible, and if by chance you stumbled across a safe, serene existence, it was because you’d never really reached for anything in the first place.

At last, Annie had something she wanted to reach for, a risk she wanted to take. She turned to her daughter. “When I was in Mystic, I started thinking about opening my own bookstore. There was a wonderful old Victorian house at the end of Main Street, and the downstairs was vacant.”

“That’s why you’ve been reading all those business books.”

Annie bit down on her smile and nodded. She felt like a child again, who’d just shown a friend her most precious possession and found that it was as beautiful as she’d imagined. “Yes.”

Natalie gave her a slow-building grin. “Way to go, Mom. You’d be excellent at that. You could give the Malibu bookstore a run for its money. Maybe I could even work for you in the summers.”

Annie looked away. That wasn’t part of her dream at all, doing it here, under the watchful, critical eye of her husband. She could just hear his comments. . . .

Not like Nick’s response.

There was a knock at the door.

Annie tensed. It’s time. “Come in,” she called out.

Blake strode into the room, wearing a black silk suit and a bright smile. “Hey guys. Is Natalie ready? Mrs. Peterson and Sally are here to pick her up.”

Annie manufactured a brittle laugh. “I always pictured myself lugging your suitcases up the dorm stairs and unpacking your clothes for you. I wanted you to at least start school with your things organized.”

“I would have had to call security to get rid of you.” Natalie started out laughing and ended up crying.

Annie pulled Natalie into her arms. “I’ll miss you, baby.”

Natalie clung to her, whispering, “Don’t you forget that bookstore while I’m gone.”

Annie was the first to draw back, knowing she had to be the one to do it. She touched Natalie’s soft cheek, gazed into her precious blue eyes, remembering for the first time in years how they used to be the color of slate. So long ago . . .

“Good-bye, Nana-banana,” she whispered.

“I love you, Mom.” It wasn’t a child’s wobbly voice that said the words. It was a young woman, ready at last to be on her own. Sniffling, her smile trembling, Natalie pulled away.

She gave her dad a weak grin. “Okay, Dad. Walk me out.”

After they’d turned and walked away, Annie kept watching, as the door slowly clicked shut. She surprised herself by not crying.

Oh, she knew that later, in the long darkness of the night, and in the many days that lay ahead, a new kind of loneliness would creep toward her, loose its silent voice in the echo of this emptier house, but she knew, too, that she would survive. She was stronger than she’d been in March. She was ready to let her eldest daughter go into the world.

“Good-bye, Nana,” she whispered.

Annie went into labor in the first week of November. She woke in the middle of the night, with her stomach on fire. The second cramp hit so hard, she couldn’t breathe.

She doubled forward. “Oh . . . God . . .” She focused on her own hands, until the pain released her. Clutching her belly, she flung the covers back and clambered out of bed. She started to scream, but another cramp sliced her voice into a pathetic hiss. “Blake—”

He sat upright in bed. “Annie?”

“It’s too . . . early,” she wheezed, clutching his pajama sleeve. She thought of Adrian and panicked. “Oh, God, it’s too early. . . .”

“Jesus.” He lurched out of bed and raced for the clothes that lay heaped over a chair. In a matter of minutes, he had Annie in the car and they were speeding toward the hospital.

“Hang on, Annie. I’ll get you to the hospital.” He shot her a nervous look. “Just hang on.”

She squeezed her eyes shut. Imagine you’re on a white sand beach.

Another cramp.

“Shit,” she hissed. It was impossible. All she could think about was the pain, the red-hot pain that was chewing across her belly, and the life inside her. Her baby. She clutched her stomach. “Hold on, baby girl . . . hold on.”

But all she saw was Adrian, tiny Adrian, hooked up to a dozen machines, being lowered into the ground in a casket the size of a bread box. . . .

Not again, she prayed silently over and over. Please God . . . not again.

The sterile white walls of the hospital’s waiting room pressed in on Blake. He paced back and forth, one minute watching the clock, then skimming through some idiotic magazine about celebrities and their infantile problems.

He kept reliving it in his mind. Annie being rushed into the delivery room, her eyes wide with fear, and her voice, broken and braying, saying over and over again, It’s too early.

Everything had flashed before his eyes in that single, horrifying moment when they’d put her on a gurney and wheeled her away from him. He’d seen his whole marriage in an instant, all the good times and the bad times and the in-between times; he’d seen Annie go from a fresh-faced college sophomore to a pregnant thirty-nine-year-old.

“Mr. Colwater?”

He spun away from the window and saw Annie’s obstetrician, Dr. North, standing in the doorway. She wore a crisp white coat and a tired smile. “The baby—”

“How’s Annie?”

Dr. North frowned for a second, then said, “Your wife is sleeping peacefully. You may see her now.”

He sagged in relief. “Thank God. Let’s go.” He followed Dr. North down the quiet white hallway to a private room.

Inside, the curtains were drawn and the room lay steeped in bluish shadows. The bed was a narrow, steel-railed thing tucked neatly inside an L-shaped privacy curtain. A bedside table held a telephone and a blue plastic water pitcher with the room number scrawled across the side—as if someone would steal it. Metal IV racks stood alongside the bed like tall, thin vultures, their plastic bags and see-through veins connected to Annie’s pale wrists.