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  With a fork, she was attacking the edges of the cookies. 'Whoa. Who peed in your Cheerios?'

  'Well, what do you expect? You waltz in here and tell me I look like crap, and then you make me feel completely inadequate--'

  'You're a pastry chef, Charlotte. You could bake circles around - What on earth are you doing?'

  'Making them look homemade,' Charlotte said. 'Because I'm not a pastry chef, not anymore. Not for a long time.'

  When I'd first met Charlotte, she had just been named the finest pastry chef in New Hampshire. I'd actually read about her in a magazine that lauded her ability to take unlikely ingredients and come up with the most remarkable confections. She used to never come empty-handed to my house - she'd bring cupcakes with spun-sugar icing, pies with berries that burst like fireworks, puddings that acted like balms. Her souffles were as light as summer clouds; her chocolate fondant could wipe your mind clean of whatever obstacles had littered your day. She told me that, when she baked, she could feel herself coming back to center, that everything else fell away, and she remembered who she was supposed to be. I'd been jealous. I had a vocation - and I was a damn good doctor - but Charlotte had a calling. She dreamed of opening a patisserie, of writing her own bestselling cookbook. In fact, I never imagined she would find anything she loved more than baking, until you came along.

  I moved the platter away. 'Charlotte. Are you okay?'

  'Let's see. I was arrested last weekend; my daughter's in a body cast; I don't even have time to take a shower - yup, I'm just fantastic.' She turned to the doorway and the staircase upstairs. 'Amelia! Let's go!'

  'Emma's gone selectively deaf, too,' I said. 'I swear she ignores me on purpose. Yesterday, I asked her eight times to clear the kitchen counter--'

  'You know what,' Charlotte said wearily. 'I really don't care about the problems you're having with your daughter.'

  No sooner had my jaw dropped - I had always been Charlotte's confidante, not her punching bag - than she shook her head and apologized. 'I'm sorry. I don't know what's wrong with me. I shouldn't be taking this out on you.'

  'It's okay,' I said.

  Just then the older girls clattered down the stairs and skidded past us in a flurry of whispers and giggles. I put my hand on Charlotte's arm. 'Just so you know,' I said firmly. 'You're the most devoted mother I've ever met. You've given up your whole life to take care of Willow.'

  She ducked her head and nodded before looking up at me. 'Do you remember her first ultrasound?'

  I thought for a second, and then I grinned. 'We saw her sucking her thumb. I didn't even have to point it out to you and Sean; it was clear as day.'

  'Right,' your mother repeated. 'Clear as day.'

  Charlotte

  March 2007

  W

  hat if it was someone's fault?

  The idea was just the germ of a seed, carried in the hollow beneath my breastbone when we left the law offices. Even when I was lying awake next to Sean, I heard it as a drumbeat in my blood: what if, what if, what if. For five years now I had loved you, hovered over you, held you when you had a break. I had gotten exactly what I so desperately wished for: a beautiful baby. So how could I admit to anyone - much less myself - that you were not only the most wonderful thing that had ever happened to me . . . but also the most exhausting, the most overwhelming?

  I would listen to people complain about their kids being impolite or surly or even getting into trouble with the law, and I'd be jealous. When those kids turned eighteen, they'd be on their own, making their own mistakes and being held accountable. But you were not the kind of child I could let fly in the world. After all, what if you fell?

  And what would happen to you when I wasn't around to catch you anymore?

  After one week went by and then another, I began to realize that the law offices of Robert Ramirez were just as disgusted by a woman who would harbor these secret thoughts as I was. Instead, I threw myself into making you happy. I played Scrabble until I knew all the two-letter words by heart; I watched programs on Animal Planet until I had memorized the scripts. By now, your father had settled back into his work routine; Amelia had gone back to school.

  This morning, you and I were squeezed into the downstairs bathroom. I faced you, my arms under yours, balancing you over the toilet so that you could pee. 'The bags,' you said. 'They're getting in the way!'

  With one hand, I adjusted the trash bags that were wrapped around your legs while I grunted under the weight of you. It had taken a series of failed attempts to figure out how one went to the bathroom while wearing a spica cast - another little tidbit the doctors don't share. From parents on online forums I had learned to wedge plastic garbage bags under the lip of the cast where it had been left open, a liner of sorts so that the plaster edge would stay dry and clean. Needless to say, a trip to the bathroom for you took about thirty minutes, and after a few accidents, you'd gotten very good at predicting when you had to go, instead of waiting till the last minute.

  'Forty thousand people get hurt by toilets every year,' you said.

  I gritted my teeth. 'For God's sake, Willow, just concentrate before you make it forty thousand and one.'

  'Okay, I'm done.'

  With another balancing act, I passed you the roll of toilet tissue and let you reach between your legs. 'Good work,' I said, leaning down to flush and then gingerly backing out of the narrow bathroom door. But my sneaker caught on the edge of the rug, and I felt myself going down. I twisted so that I'd land first, so that my body would cushion your blow.

  I'm not sure which of us started to laugh first, and when the doorbell and phone rang simultaneously, we started to laugh even harder. Maybe I would change my message. Sorry, I can't come to the phone right now. I'm holding my daughter, in her fifty-pound cast, over the toilet bowl.

  I levered myself on my elbows, pulling you upright with me. The doorbell rang again, impatient. 'Coming,' I called out.

  'Mommy!' you screeched. 'My pants!'

  You were still half naked after our bathroom run, and getting you into your flannel pajama bottoms would be another ten-minute endeavor. Instead, I grabbed one of the trash bags still tucked into your cast and wrapped it around you like a black plastic skirt.

  On the front porch stood Mrs Dumbroski, one of the neighbors who lived down the road. She had twin grandsons your age, who had visited last year, stolen her glasses when she fell asleep, and set a pile of raked leaves on fire that would have spread to her garage if the mailman hadn't come by at just the right moment. 'Hello, dear,' Mrs Dumbroski said. 'I hope this isn't a bad time.'

  'Oh no,' I answered. 'We were just . . .' I looked at you, wearing the trash bag, and we both started to laugh again.

  'I was looking for my dish,' Mrs Dumbroski said.

  'Your dish?'

  'The one I baked the lasagna in. I do hope you've had a chance to enjoy it.'

  It must have been one of the meals that had been waiting for us on our return home from the hell that was Disney World. To be honest, we'd eaten only a few; the rest were getting freezer burn even as I stood there. There was only so much mac and cheese and lasagna and baked ziti that a human could stomach.

  It seemed to me that if you made a meal for someone who was sick, it was pretty cheeky to ask whether or not she'd finished it so you could have your Pyrex back.

  'How about I try to find the dish, Mrs Dumbroski, and have Sean drop it off at your house later?'

  Her lips pursed. 'Well,' she said, 'then I suppose I'll have to wait to make my tuna casserole.'

  For just a moment I entertained the thought of stuffing you into Mrs Dumbroski's chicken-wing arms and watching her totter under the weight of you while I went to the freezer, found her stupid lasagna, and threw it onto the ground at her feet - but instead I just smiled. 'Thanks for being so accommodating. I've got to get Willow down for a nap now,' I said, and I closed the door.

  'I don't take naps,' you said.

  'I know. I just said that to make her leave,