LITMIR.BIZ

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much to do that.

      No. This was her problem. Hers alone. She would deal with it.

      “Wendy?” Gina moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. “I just want you to know that—that I don’t agree with what you want to do.” She held out her hands and Wendy took them. “But I’ll stand by you, every inch of the way.”

      Wendy smiled. “I love you, Mom,” she said softly.

      “I know. And I love you, too.” Gina gave her daughter a quick hug. Then she stepped back and smiled, even though her eyes were suspiciously damp. “Well,” she said briskly, “that’s that, my bristly, stubborn daughter. I have the feeling that doctor’s in for a big surprise.”

      “Me, too,” Wendy said, and her smile broadened.

      “Did Daddy say when he’d set up a meeting for you with this Dr. Pommier?”

      “He doesn’t know, exactly. He’ll have to wait for the right moment.”

      “Well, until that moment comes, I’m going to make the most of having you here.” Gina brushed a curl from Wendy’s brow. “What would you like to do today? How about driving down to Lee? Did you know they built a mall there?”

      “A mall?” Wendy said, grasping eagerly at the lifeline her mother had tossed. “A real mall? With real department stores?”

      “Better than that. Discount stores.” Gina rolled her eyes. “Veddy, veddy upscale, my deah. Wait until you see. Tell you what. I’ll clean up here while you get dressed.”

      “I’ll help you.”

      “I thought we’d settled all that. You’re my baby, you’re home and I’m going to do my very best to spoil you rotten.”

      “Sentenced to spoiling,” Wendy said, and grinned. “Okay. It’s a deal.”

      Gina watched her daughter start from the room. In for a penny, in for a pound, she thought, and took a deep breath.

      “Wendy?”

      Wendy turned and looked at her. “Yes?”

      “I know you told me that you didn’t want anyone to know you were going to be here, but…are you going to see Seth while you’re home?”

      Wendy’s face paled. “Did you tell him I was coming back? Oh, Mother! I specifically asked you—”

      “I didn’t tell him anything.”

      “You just said—”

      “All I said was, are you going to see him while you’re here?”

      “No,” Wendy said sharply. “Why would I?”

      “Well, I just thought…” Gina hesitated. “As a courtesy, I thought you might at least call him. He still asks about you, you know.”

      Wendy dug her hands into the pockets of her robe. Her fingers closed around a loose thread and she worried it between her thumb and forefinger. “Does he?”

      “He used to call to see how you were. Even now, if we run into each other, he asks about you.”

      “That’s very nice of him,” Wendy said stiffly, “but Seth and I have nothing to say to each other. I’m a different person now, and so is he.”

      Gina gave a resigned sigh. “Okay.”

      “I don’t want to talk to him. I don’t want to see him. And if you should run into him—”

      “Wendy.” Gina put her hand on her daughter’s arm. “Forget I mentioned it.”

      “We were kids, that’s all. Two silly kids. The accident helped me realize that.”

      Wendy’s eyes darkened. She looked down, and Gina held her breath. Her daughter seemed on the verge of saying something that would explain the change of heart that had taken place in her, but when Wendy raised her head, Gina knew the moment had slipped by.

      “Let’s not talk about the past,” she said softly. “Okay?”

      Gina nodded. She wanted to fling her arms around Wendy and tell her she’d make whatever was troubling her go away, just as she had when Wendy was little. But the bittersweet truth was that mothers lost that magical talent when children grew up.

      “Okay.” She smiled brightly and looked at the kitchen clock. “Hey, if we want to be the first ones there and pick up some real bargains, we’d better get moving.”

      “Right.” Wendy smiled back, although her smile looked as phony as Gina’s felt. “Give me ten minutes to shower and dress.”

      “You’re on,” Gina said.

      She held her smile until Wendy left the kitchen. Then she sighed and began stacking the dishes in the dishwasher.

      Her little girl—and that was what Wendy would always be, no matter how the years slipped by—her little girl was badly troubled. Gina kept looking for an explanation. Howard kept saying it was her leg, as if it was foolish to wonder about any other reason.

      Maybe he was right, but Wendy had beat the odds. Wasn’t that all that mattered? She was out of a wheelchair and walking, after most of the doctors had said she’d be an invalid for life.

      Still, Gina supposed she could understand that Wendy would feel differently. People tended to define themselves by the things they did. She’d taken enough silly pop quizzes to know that. Who was Gina Monroe, if anyone asked? How would Gina Monroe describe herself? As a wife. A mother. A teacher.

      Wendy would have defined herself as a champion skier. But was that all? It didn’t seem possible that her daughter’s self-image could be so one-dimensional. Wendy had loved to ski from the time she was a child, but there’d been more in her life than skiing.

      At least, there had been after Seth Castleman came along.

      Gina untied her apron, hung it on the back of the pantry door, then sat down at the table to finish her lukewarm tea.

      Howard had bought their daughter her first pair of skis the Christmas she was, what? Four? Five?

      “She’s just a baby,” Gina had said warily. “She could get hurt.”

      Her husband had smiled proudly as they watched their little girl stomp around the snowy yard. “She’ll be fine. She can’t possibly get hurt on the Ski Wee hills. You know that, darling. Those slopes are nothing more than bumps in the snow. Besides, our girl’s a natural. Just look at her. She’s got the makings of a champion.”

      He was right. Wendy had been born to ski. She was quick, graceful, a joy to watch. At eight, she’d won her first junior medal. At ten, she was taking winter vacation trips with Howard to Aspen. By the time she was twelve, skiing was all she lived for.

      She was bright, thank goodness, so she did well in school, even though she didn’t pay much attention to her studies. As for dances and parties and the sweet silliness young girls enjoy—those things didn’t interest her. Gina closed her eyes, remembering how she used to long to be able to make the same complaints as other mothers of teenage girls, but Wendy didn’t spend hours tying up the phone, or plaster her room with posters of rock idols and giggle over boys.

      And then, when Wendy was seventeen, she’d met a boy on the slopes. She was practicing; Seth was running the lift. Gina didn’t know what had happened that day, except that her daughter came home with high color in her cheeks and excitement in her eyes.

      “A good day at Brodie, huh, punkin?” Howard said at dinner.

      Wendy nodded. “Yes…terrific.”

      Something in the way she said it, or maybe in the quick rush of color that climbed into her face again, told Gina the truth.

      Wendy had met a boy.

      Gina kept her thoughts to herself. The phone began to ring with

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