My mother handed the baby to me. "Take him, sweetheart, this is a new dress. He might spit up." She sat gracefully on the sofa and crossed her long, toned legs. "Well, Jack, I'm the last one to interfere in someone else's plans. But if you are getting involved with my daughter, I'd feel more comfortable about it if I knew you and your family a little bit better. I'd like to meet your father, to start with."

"You're too late," I said. "His father's already got a girlfriend."

"Why Ella, I didn't mean . . ." She laughed lightly and shot Jack a commiserating, conspiratorial glance—look at what we have to deal with—and her tone became maddeningly sweet. "My daughter has always resented that men like me so much. I don't think she brought a single boyfriend home who didn't make a pass at me."

"I only brought one home," I said. "That was enough."

She gave me a chilling glance and laughed, her mouth a wide, taut pouch. "No matter what Ella says," she told Jack, "don't take her word for it. You ask me."

Whenever my mother was around, reality took on the dimensions of a fun-house mirror. Insanity was simply a result of being a frequent Starbucks customer, size eight was a stage of obesity that required medical intervention, and any man I dated was clearly having to make do with a second-rate substitute for Candy Varner. And anything I had ever done or said could be conveniently rewritten to suit whatever spin she had chosen.

For the next forty-five minutes, it was the Candy Varner Show with no commercial interruptions. She told Jack that she would have offered to take care of Luke, but she was just too busy, and she'd already done her duty, working and sacrificing all those years for her daughters, neither of whom were appropriately grateful and were both more than a little jealous. And imagine Ella giving advice to people for a living, when Ella hardly knew what she was talking about—you had to do a lot more living than Ella had before you knew who was who and what was what. Whatever Ella knew about life, it had come from her mother's imparted wisdom.

Mom proceeded to present herself as the desirable original, the brand name, with me as a failed copy. She tried to do some heavy-handed flirting with Jack. He was polite and respectful, occasionally glancing at my stony expression. When Mom started to name-drop, pretending she knew some of the same rich people Jack did, it was so mortifying that I felt myself shutting down. I stopped protesting or correcting, just occupied myself with Luke, checking his diaper, putting him back into the baby gym, and playing with him. My ears felt hot, the rest of me ice-cold.

And then I registered that, like clockwork, she had shifted the conversation to the inappropriately personal, revealing that she'd recently signed on for laser hair-removal treatments from an exclusive Houston spa. "I've been told," she was telling Jack with a girlish giggle, "that I have the cutest coochie in Texas—"

"Mom," I said sharply.

She glanced at me, her eyes sly and laughing. "Well, it's true! I'm just saying what other people—"

"Candy," Jack interrupted briskly, "this has been fun, but it's time for Ella and me to get ready for our evening out. Great to meet you. Why don't I take you down to the concierge, and he'll show you out?"

"I'll stay here and watch over Luke while you're gone," my mother insisted.

"Thanks," Jack replied, "but we're taking him with us."

"I haven't had any time with my grandson," she protested, frowning at me.

"I'll call you, Mom," I brought myself to say.

Jack went to the door and opened it. Keeping it open, he stepped out into the hallway. His tone was friendly and inexorable. "I'll wait here while you get your purse, Candy."

I stood while my mother came to embrace me. The perfumed smell of her, the warm proximity of her, made me want to cry like a child. I wondered why I would always long for her to love me in a way she wasn't capable of, why Tara and I were nothing more to her than collateral damage from a marriage that had gone bad.

I had learned that there were substitutes for a mother who couldn't be a mother. You could find love with other people. You could find it in places you weren't even looking. But the original wound would never heal. I would carry it with me forever, and so would Tara. That was the trick . . . accepting it, going on with your life, knowing it was part of you.

"Bye, Mom," I said thickly.

"Don't give him everything he wants," she said in a low voice.

"Luke?" I asked, puzzled.

"No. Jack. You'll hold on to him longer that way. Don't be too smart with him, either. Try to put some makeup on. And take off those glasses, they make you look like an old maid. Has he given you any presents yet? Tell him you want big stones, not little ones—it's a better investment."

A brittle smile worked across my face, and I drew back from her. "See you later, Mom."

She picked up her handbag, and sauntered out into the hallway.

Jack looked around the doorjamb, his gaze sliding over me. "I'll be back in a minute."

By the time Jack had returned, I had downed a shot of tequila from the pantry, hoping the liquor would burn through my head-to-toe numbness. It hadn't. I felt like a freezer that needed to be defrosted.

Luke fretted in my arms, making impatient noises, wriggling.

Jack came to me and touched my chin, forcing me to meet his searching gaze.