“You can’t keep doing this to me.” Her voice wanted to break. “You can’t keep expecting me to pay and pay and pay. I—”

Mac jolted when Del grabbed the phone out of her hand. “Don’t,” she began, and he cut her off with a look.

“Linda? Hi, this is Delaney Brown. Sorry, Mackensie’s been called away from the phone.”

“We haven’t finished—”

“Yes, you have, Linda. You’ve finished. Whatever you’re pushing her for this time, she said no. Now she’s busy.”

“You have no right to talk to me this way. You think because you’re a Brown, because you have money you can push yourself between me and my own child?”

“No, I think I can do that because I’m Mac’s friend. You have a real good day.”

He hung up and turned to where Mac stood, misery shining in her eyes. “Don’t cry,” he ordered.

She shook her head, went straight into his arms to press her face to his shoulder. “Goddamn it, goddamn it, why do I let her do this to me?”

“Because if you had the choice, you’d be a good and loving daughter. She doesn’t give you the choice. It’s on her, Mac. Money again?”

“Yes, again.”

He rubbed her back. “You did the right thing. You said no. Keep saying that. Now I want you to promise me you’re not going to answer the phone if—when—she calls back. If you don’t give me your word, I’m dragging you out of here, forcing you to watch the game at Jack’s.”

“I promise. I wouldn’t have answered, but I didn’t recognize the number. She used somebody named Ari’s phone and called the business line. She knows how to get to me.”

“Screen your calls, at least for a while, unless you’re sure who it is. Okay?”

“Yeah, okay. Thanks, Del. Thanks.”

“I love you, baby.”

“I know.” She stepped back, smiled at him. “I love you, too. Go watch football. Don’t tell Parker. If I need to, I will.”

“All right.” He picked up his coat again. “If you need me—”

“I’ll call. That’s another promise.”

She couldn’t go back to work, not yet, not until she cleared her head and could focus again. And the pity party she felt coming on, with balloons and streamers, wouldn’t clear anything.

Take a walk, she thought. It had worked before, with Carter. She’d see if it worked on her own.

It wasn’t evening, and it wasn’t snowing, but the air was clear and cold. Everyone else tucked inside, she thought. Tucked in, but close. If she wanted or needed company, she could find it.

Not now, she thought again, not yet. Remembering the bird feeders, she hiked through the snow to fill them from the lidded can. Running low, she realized as she scooped out feed. Something for the grocery list.

Ten pounds of bird feed. A quart of milk. A new spine.

Too bad she couldn’t buy the last on the list at the local market. She’d just have to grow one when it came to Linda Elliot Meyers Barrington.

After locking the lid back down, she walked to the pond, stepped under one of the willows. There, she brushed off the snow on the bench under the fan of whippy branches and sat for a while. The grounds remained coated in white, but the sun had stripped the branches so trees speared up, winter bones, toward a sky the color of old, faded denim.

She could see the rose arbor, white as the snow, with the canes twined and twisted, and sharp with thorns. And beyond, the pergola, massed with dormant wisteria.

She supposed it looked peaceful, color and life sleeping through the winter. But at the moment, at that moment, lonely was the only word that came to mind.

She rose to go back to the house. She’d do better with work. If she made mistakes, she’d do it over and over until she passed through this mood.

She’d turn on music, loud, so she didn’t have to hear her own thoughts.

Even as she opened the door she heard the weeping, and her mother’s sobbing voice. “I don’t know how you can be so cold, so unfeeling. I need your help. Just a few more days, Mackensie. Just—”

And, thank God, her machine cut the call off.

Mac closed the door, took off her coat. Work? Who was she kidding?

She curled on the couch, dragged the throw over her. She’d sleep it off, she promised herself. Sleep off the misery.

When the phone rang again, she tucked into a defensive ball. “Oh God, oh God, leave me alone, please leave me alone. Give me some peace.”

“Ah, hello. It’s Carter. You must be working, or you needed to go out. Or, ha, you’re just not in the mood to talk.”

“Can’t talk,” she murmured from the couch. “Can’t. You talk. You just talk to me.”

She closed her eyes and let his voice soothe her.

IN HIS TOWNHOUSE, CARTER HUNG UP THE PHONE. THE THREE-LEGGED orange cat he called Triad leaped into his lap. He sat, scratching the cat absently between the ears and wishing he’d been able to talk to Mac. Even just for a minute. If he had, he wouldn’t be sitting here, thinking about her, instead of doing his Sunday chores.

He had laundry to deal with, tomorrow’s lesson plans to review. More papers to grade, and the story outlines from his Creative Writing class to read and approve. He hadn’t finished his paper on “Shakespeare’s Women: The Duality.” Or given enough attention to the short story he had in the works.

Then he was expected for Sunday dinner at his parents’.

He was mooning over her, and realizing it didn’t seem to make a damn bit of difference.

“Laundry first,” he told the cat, and poured Triad onto the chair as he himself vacated it. He put the first load in the washer in the claustrophobic little laundry room off his kitchen. He started to make himself a cup of tea, then scowled.

“I can have coffee if I want. There’s no law that says I can’t have a damn cup of coffee in the afternoon.” He brewed it with a kind of defiance that made him feel foolish even though no one was there to see it. While his clothes washed, he took the coffee back upstairs to the smaller of the two bedrooms, outfitted as his office.

He began grading the papers, and sighed over the C minus he was forced to give one of his brightest—and laziest—students. He felt a conference coming on. No point in putting it off, he decided, and wrote See me after class under the grade.