"Why shouldn't mine have prices on it?" I asked.

"Because you're the woman," Churchill said, still annoyed by the waiter's mistake. "I'm taking you to lunch, and you're not supposed to think about how much it costs."

"That hamburger was one hundred dollars." I couldn't stop obsessing over it. "What could they possibly do to that hamburger to make it worth a hundred dollars?"

My expression seemed to amuse him. "Let's ask."

A waiter was enlisted to answer questions about the menu. When asked how the hamburger was prepared and what made it so special, he explained the ingredients were all organic, including those in the homemade parmesan bun, and it contained smoked buffalo mozzarella, hydroponic butterhead lettuce, vine-ripened tomato, and chile compote layered atop a burger made of organic beef and ground emu.

The word "emu" set me off.

I felt a laugh break from my lips, and then another, and then there was no stopping the helpless giggles that made my eyes water and my shoulders tremble. I clamped a hand over my mouth to hold them back, but that only made it worse. I began to seriously worry if I could stop. I was making a spectacle of myself in the fanciest restaurant I'd ever been in.

The waiter tactfully disappeared. I tried to gasp out an apology to Churchill, who watched me with concern and shook his head slightly, as if to say No, don 't apologize. He put his hand on my wrist in a reassuring grip. Somehow the pressure on my wrist quieted the wild laughter. I was able to take a long breath, and my chest relaxed.

I told him about moving to the trailer in Welcome, and Mama's boyfriend named Flip who had shot the emu. I couldn't seem to talk fast enough, so many details tumbled out. Churchill caught every word, his eyes crinkling at the corners, and when I finally reached the part about giving the dead emu to the Cateses, he was chuckling.

Although I hadn't been aware of ordering wine, the waiter brought a bottle of pinot noir. The liquid glittered richly in tall-stemmed crystal glasses. "I shouldn't." I said. "I'm going back to work after lunch."

"You're not going back to work."

"Of course I am. My afternoon is booked." But I felt weary at the thought of it, not just the work, but summoning the appropriate charm and cheerfulness my clients expected.

Churchill reached inside his jacket, extracted a cell phone no larger than a domino, and dialed Salon One. As I watched, openmouthed, he asked for Zenko, informed him that I would be taking the afternoon off, and asked if that would be all right. According to Churchill, Zenko said of course it would be all right and he would rearrange the schedule. No problem.

As Churchill closed the cell phone with a self-satisfied click, I said darkly, "I'm going to catch hell for this later. And if anyone else but you had made that call, Zenko would have asked if you have your head up your culo."

Churchill grinned. One of his flaws was that he enjoyed people's inability to tell him off.

I talked through the entire lunch, prodded by Churchill's questions, his warm interest, the wineglass that somehow never emptied no matter how much I drank. The freedom of saying anything to him, telling all, relieved a burden I hadn't even realized I'd been carrying. In my relentless push to keep moving forward, there had been so many emotions I hadn't let myself inhabit fully, so many things I hadn't talked about. Now I couldn't quite catch up to myself. I fumbled in my purse for my wallet and got out Carrington's school picture. She had a gap-toothed smile, and one of her ponytails was a little higher than the other.

Churchill looked at the photo for a long time, even reached in his pocket for a pair of reading glasses so he could see every detail. He drank some wine before commenting. "Happy child, looks like."

"Yes, she is." I tucked the photo back into my wallet with care.

"You've done well, Liberty," he said. "It was the right thing to keep her."

"I had to. She's all I've got. And I knew no one would take care of her like I would." I was surprised by the words that slipped out so easily, the need to confess everything.

This was what it would have been like, I thought with a small, painful thrill. This was a glimpse of what I might have had with Daddy. A man so much older and wiser, who seemed to understand everything, even the things I hadn't said. It had bothered me for years that Carrington didn't have a father. What I hadn't realized was how much I still needed one for myself.

Still buzzed from the wine. I told Churchill about Carrington's upcoming Thanksgiving pageant at school. Her class, which would perform two songs, was divided into Pilgrims and Native Americans, and Carrington had balked at being part of either group. She wanted to be a cowgirl. She'd been so stubborn about it that her teacher, Miss Hansen, had called me at home. I'd explained to Carrington that there had been no cowgirls in 1621. There hadn't even been a Texas then, I told her. It turned out my sister didn't care about historical accuracy.

The argument had finally been resolved by Miss Hansen's suggestion that Carrington be allowed to wear the cowgirl costume and walk out on stage at the very beginning of the pageant. She would carry a cardboard sign shaped like our state, printed with the words A TEXAS THANKSGIVING.

Churchill roared with laughter at the story, seeming to think my sister's muleheadedness was a virtue.

"You're missing the point." I told him. "If this is a sign of things to come, I'm going to have a terrible time when she hits adolescence."