“What is it, Gin?”

Looking down at the seat she had vacated, she thought of the many times she had ridden side by side with him in this sports car. Usually it had been in the dark, not the daytime, and nearly always it had been on the way to, or on the way back from, one of their trysts. Or fights.

Then again, those two things had usually gone hand in hand with them.

“I meant what I said.” Samuel T.’s voice grew remote and his eyes shifted away to the view down the hill to the river. “You can call me anytime. I will always come help you.”

It took her a minute to realize he was talking about the Richard Pford situation. And she had an instinct to falsely reassure him that everything was okay.

Maybe because it was hard to admit that, once again, she had made a bad decision.

One of so many.

“I have to go,” she said roughly.

“So go. You’re the one hanging on to my car.”

Gin had to pull her fingers out of the door, and the tips hummed from having been jammed into the mechanicals of that window.

For a moment, she had a notion that she would tip her chin up, quip some sort of witty rejoinder, and flounce off, confident in the knowledge that he would be measuring her ass and wishing he had his hands on it as she walked away.

She could not manage the show, however.

As she stepped back, Samuel T. put the convertible in gear. “Take care of yourself, Gin.”

“Always.”

He muttered something that was drowned out by the flare of the engine, and then he was gone down the hill, the sweet smell of gas and oil lingering in the still air.

Standing in the golden rays of the low sun, she waited for the two little red lights to disappear. Then she turned and looked up to Amelia’s windows again.

As if the girl had witnessed the departure, one of the sashes went up and their daughter put her head out. “I’m all packed. Not that I had much. Can we go now?”

Gin took a second to memorize what the girl looked like, leaning out, that brunette hair flashing hints of auburn in the sunlight, her red and black blouse loose and flowing.

Mothers were supposed to be kind and nurturing. Whether they were stay-at-homes or full-time professionals . . . whether they were mavens of an organic lifestyle or proponents of Oreos and soda . . . whether they were strict or lax, vax or no vax, rich or poor . . . mothers were supposed to be the ones that kids felt safest around. They were the kissers of boo-boos, the cheerleaders of accomplishment, the dispensers of Tylenol and tissues.

Mostly, behind all the labels that were applied to them, good mothers were just supposed to be good human beings.

“What’s wrong now?” Amelia said.

The exhaustion in the kid’s voice had been well-earned by Gin’s failure on pretty much all accounts: Amelia had been raised by a series of baby nurses and nannies, and then as soon as she was a freshman in high school, she had been shipped off to Hotchkiss like a piece of furniture that had to be re-upholstered before it could be put back in the parlor.

The girl’s decision to come home permanently had been the first pivot point in her life that Gin had been involved in. And Gin had decided to drive her back to that prep school not just because the family’s private planes were grounded, but because it was time for her to learn about who her daughter was.

What better way than fourteen hours in a car?

“Hello?” Amelia prompted.

“I’m sorry. I’ll just gather a few things and we’ll go right away.” Best to leave before Richard got home from work. “Lane has the Rolls-Royce, but there’s a Mercedes we can take.”

“Good. I’d rather not be on campus in the Phantom. Too showy.”

“Says the girl who’s wearing Chanel.” Gin smiled so that she didn’t seem censorious. “You have quite a sense of style, you know that?”

“I get it from you and Grandmother. That’s what everyone says.”

For some reason, Gin couldn’t process that. It was too painful. “You should probably say good-bye to her.”

“She doesn’t even know who I am.”

“All right.”

“So come on. The sooner I leave, the sooner I can come home.”

Amelia ducked back in and shut the window.

And still Gin stayed where she was, the afternoon sun falling on her shoulders as if God Himself were laying His hands upon her in support.

Yes, she decided. It was time to tell them both the truth.

Amelia and Samuel T. had every right to know about each other, and it was more than appropriate for Gin to finally own up to her sin of omission.

And parts of it were going to be okay. The girl was most certainly going to gain a father. Samuel T. would absolutely do right by her, now and into the future.

But Gin would lose the man she loved forever.

Wasn’t that what you did for your children, though? Sacrifice your happiness for theirs? Then again, was it really a sacrifice when she had created the problem?

It more like a well-earned punishment.

One thing was certain. Samuel T. was never, ever going to forgive her—and for the first time in her selfish life, she acknowledged that nor should he.

The intensive-care unit was on the other side of the hospital campus, blocks away from the emergency room, but Lane didn’t mind the walk through the various buildings. As he went along, following signs and consulting visitor desks along the way, he composed himself in the vain hope that Miss Aurora would be conscious and thus in a position to try to read his expression, his mood, his stress level.

As he crossed over Broad Street on yet another pediwalk, he looked down at the roofs and hoods of the traffic that was thickening as the workday ground to an end. Soon enough, spaghetti junction, that knot of intersecting highways by the Big Five Bridge, was going to be congested to the point of stop-and-go delays.

It wasn’t anything like Manhattan had. Or L.A. But it was enough to annoy the locals.

Him, too, as it were. God, it was amazing how quickly the standards of Charlemont had seeped back into him. Here, if you were stuck at rush hour for ten minutes, it was a tiresome insult to your dinner plans. Up in New York City? You had to pack an overnight bag and a sandwich if you wanted to try to use the Long Island Expressway to go five miles at four twenty in the afternoon.

Craziness.

As he entered what he hoped was his last building, he stopped by the visitor desk and waited for the pleasant-looking older woman to glance up at him.

No-go. She was absorbed in her People magazine crossword puzzle.

“Ma’am?” he said. “I’m looking for the ICU?”

Without bothering to shift her eyes away from the little squares she was filling in, she muttered, “Down to the right, take the first set of elevators up four floors. There you go.”

“Thank you.”

Lane followed the directions, and as soon as he came to the elevators, he knew where he was by the atrium down below. The problem had been where he’d started from. As long as he parked in the garage off Sanford Street, he could find his way to Miss Aurora’s room no problem.

When the elevator’s doors opened, he caught a ride up with a man in a wheelchair, a woman in a hospital johnny who smelled as though she had been out for a smoke, and a couple who were holding hands and looking very nervous. The smoker and the couple got off before he did. He didn’t know where the wheelchair guy was headed.

As Lane stepped out onto the unit, his stomach contracted like a fist. Following protocol, he checked in with the nursing station, and it was a relief to be nodded at and sent down the hall.

This meant his momma was still alive.

Like Chantal’s emergency bay, the ICU rooms had glass walls and interior drapes that could be pulled for privacy. Unlike in the ER, there were dry-erase boards next to the entrances of the rooms, with the patient’s name and the shift nurse and attending who were responsible.

Lane stopped when he got to the one that said Aurora Toms.

Actually, it read rora Toms because of a smudge.

He picked up the black pen that was on top of the board, uncapped it, and added the Au. When that just looked messy, he wiped out the whole thing with his fingertips and carefully re-did it so it was proper.

Miss Aurora Toms

Her surname was because she’d been one of Tom’s twelve kids.