“I’ll try. Take care now.”

She got in, closed the door.

Ignoring her mother’s orders to put on her seat belt, Adrian knelt on the back seat so she could look through the rear window of the big car, see her grandparents waving goodbye as they stood in front of the big stone house with the dogs at their feet.

“Adrian, sit down now so Mimi can buckle you in.” Even as she spoke and the limo slid under the covered bridge, Lina’s cell phone rang. She glanced at the display. “I need to take this.” She shifted down to the far side of the bench seat. “This is Lina. Hello, Meredith.”

“We’ve got fizzy water and juice.” Mimi spoke brightly as she buckled Adrian’s seat belt. “And some berries, and those veggie chips you like. We’ll have a car picnic.”

“That’s okay.” Adrian unzipped the little cross-body bag her grandparents had bought her and took out her Game Boy. “I’m not hungry.”

NEW YORK CITY

From that long-ago summer, Adrian developed the habit of writing letters. She called her grandparents at least once a week, shot off the occasional email or text, but the weekly letter became a tradition.

Taking advantage of a warm and breezy September morning, she sat outside on the rooftop terrace of her mother’s Upper East Side triplex to write about her first week of the school year.

She could’ve typed it out on her computer and mailed it, but that felt no different from email to her. It was, she thought, the act of writing that made letters personal.

She texted, and often, with Maya, and even sent an occasional handwritten card.

She no longer had a nanny—Mimi had fallen in love with Issac, gotten married, and had two kids of her own. Besides, Adrian would be seventeen in six weeks.

Mimi worked for Lina still, but as an administrative assistant, helping schedule appointments, working with Harry to line up interviews and events.

Her mother’s career had skyrocketed with books and DVDs, fitness events, motivational speeches, TV appearances (she’d played herself on an episode of Law and Order: SVU).

The Yoga Baby brand shined sterling.

The flagship Ever Fit gym in Manhattan had franchises all over the country. Its fitness wear line, its health food line, its essential oils, candles, lotions, its branding on gym equipment had, over slightly more than a decade, turned what had been a one-woman operation into a billion-dollar national enterprise.

Yoga Baby financed camps for underprivileged kids and donated heavily to women’s shelters, so Adrian couldn’t claim her mother didn’t give back.

But most days after school Adrian came home to an empty apartment. She’d joked with Maya that she had a closer relationship with the doorman than her mother.

Their closest contact, essentially, Adrian thought, came during the weeks they worked together on their annual mother-daughter exercise DVD.

But that was her life, and she’d already decided what to do with the rest of it when she could make her own choices.

She’d already made one of her first, and sat now in the warm breeze waiting for the hammer to drop.

It didn’t take long.

She heard the glass doors behind her slide open, hit the stops with a solid thump.

“Adrian, for Christ’s sake, what are you doing? You haven’t begun to pack. We’re leaving in an hour.”

“You’re leaving in an hour,” Adrian corrected, and kept writing. “I don’t have to pack because I’m not going.”

“Don’t be such a child. I’ve got a full schedule in L.A. tomorrow. Get packed.”

Adrian set her pen down, shifted in her chair to meet her mother’s eyes. “No. I’m not going. I’m not letting you haul me around the country for the next two and a half weeks. I’m not going to live in hotel rooms, do school online. I’m staying here, and I’m going to the damn private school you pushed me into after you bought this place last spring.”

“You’ll do exactly what I tell you. You’re still a child, so—”

“You just told me not to be a child. Can’t have it both ways, Mom. I’m sixteen—seventeen in just a few weeks. I’ve had barely three weeks in this new school where I have no friends. I’m not going to sit alone most of the day in a hotel room or a studio or some event center. I can sit alone here after school.”

“You’re not old enough to stay here alone.”

“But I’m old enough to stay alone in some other city while you’re signing your new book or DVD, while you’re doing interviews or events?”

“You’re not alone there.” Flustered, baffled, Lina dropped down to sit. “I’m a phone call or text away.”

“And since Mimi’s not going with you because she has two kids she doesn’t want to leave for two weeks, she’s a phone call away. But I’m capable of taking care of myself. If you haven’t noticed, I’ve been doing that for a while now.”

“I’ve made sure you’ve had everything you could need or want. Don’t you take that tone with me, Adrian.” Flustered and baffled turned to shocked and angry. “You’re getting the best education anyone could want, one that’ll get you into the college of your choice. You have a beautiful and safe home. I’ve worked, and worked hard, to provide those things for you.”

Adrian gave Lina a long, steady look. “You’ve worked and worked hard because you’re an ambitious woman with a genuine passion. I don’t hold that against you. I was happy in public school. I had friends there. Now I’m going to try to be happy and make friends where you planted me. I can’t do that if I’m out for two weeks.”

“If you think I’m leaving a teenager alone in New York so she can have parties and screw off from school and go out at all hours, you’re very mistaken.”

Adrian folded her arms on the table, leaned forward. “Parties? With who? I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, I don’t do drugs. I came close to having a boyfriend last year, but I have to start from scratch there now. Screw off from school? I’ve been on the honor roll since I was ten. And if I wanted to go out at all hours, I could do that when you’re here. You’d never know the difference.

“Look at me.” Adrian tossed up her hands. “I’m so responsible I annoy myself. I’ve had to be. You preach about balance, well, I’m going to take some for myself. I’m not getting pulled away from my routine again. I’m not.”

“If you’re determined not to go, I’ll see if your grandparents can have you for a couple weeks.”

“I’d love to visit them, but I’m staying here. I’m going to school here. If you don’t trust me, have Mimi check on me every day. Bribe one of the doormen to report my comings and goings, I don’t care. I’m going to get up in the mornings and go to school. I’m going to come home in the afternoons and do my assignments. I’m going to work out right in there, in that very nice home gym you set up. I’ll fix myself something to eat or order in. I’m not after parties and sex and drinking till I drop. I’m after a normal start to the school year. That’s it.”

Lina pushed up, paced over to the wall, and stared at the view of the East River. “You talk like … I’ve done my best for you, Adrian.”