Tess began giving highlights of the last couple months. After years of traveling by bus she owned her own jet, so she could now perform a concert in California one day and be in Nashville recording the next. Since it was not cost-efficient to employ a mechanic and pilot for a single jet, she had bought five and opened a plane-leasing service to defray the costs. She had been telling her mother how well the two-year-old company was doing but after only a few minutes Mary's eyes grew heavy and got the intermittent glazed look of one who's trying to give the impression of alertness. Realizing her conversation wasn't getting through, Tess finally said, "Momma, you're tired. Let me help you to bed."

Mary stifled a yawn, and murmured, "Mmm... guess you're right, honey. Have to be out by four-thirty anyway, so early-to-bed won't hurt."

Her mother's bedroom had changed only slightly more than the rest of the house. It had a new bedspread and matching curtains, but the furniture was the same, sitting in the identical spots it always had, and the carpet hadn't been replaced in all the years Tess could remember. On the chest of drawers her parents' wedding picture shared the space with the same wooden key-and-change holder that had held flotsam from the pockets of the daddy she barely remembered. He had died in an accident while driving a U.S. Mail truck when she was six. The three girls' portraits on the wall were the same ones that had been taken when they were all in elementary school and had hung on the pearlized beige-and-white wallpaper ever since.

What's wrong with me, Tess thought, that so little of this evokes nostalgia? Instead, it raised a mild revulsion for the stifling changelessness of her mother's life. How could Mary have lived all these years without replacing the carpet, let alone the man? She was an attractive woman, and a kind one, but she'd always said, "Nope. One man was enough for me. He was the only one I ever wanted." As far as Tess knew, her mother had never even dated after his death.

Tess drew up the covers when Mary lay down, and bent over her with a heavy sadness in her heart for all that her mother had missed.

"Mom, how come you never married again after Daddy died?" she asked.

"I didn't want to."

"All these years?"

"I had you girls, then the grandchildren. I know it's hard for you to understand, but I was happy. I am happy."

Tess tried to comprehend such unimaginative acceptance, but to her whose life was constantly filled with new faces and places, Mary's life seemed stultifying. When Tess would have straightened, Mary reached up and took her face in both hands.

"I know you came home against your will, dear. I'm sorry that Judy and Renee made you."

"No, Mom, I didn't, honest."

"Sure you did, but I don't hold any grudge against you for it. Who wants to stop everything to take care of a lame old woman?"

"Mom, don't be silly."

Mary went on as if Tess hadn't spoken. "But you know what I think? I think that the life you lead is wearing you out. That's why I let the girls force you into coming home, 'cause I think you needed it worse than I did."

"Mom, they didn't-"

Mary silenced her daughter with a touch on her lips. "No need to lie, Tess. I wasn't born yesterday. I said it's okay and it is. Will you make sure you get plenty of sleep yourself? We have to get going by four-thirty to be there by six, and that comes awful early. Now give me a kiss and turn out the lamp."

She kissed her mother's cheek and said, "Good night, Momma," and turned out the light.

"You can leave my door open just a crack. I like the light reminding me you're home again."

Settling her mother for the night, carefully leaving the door ajar, Tess felt a pang of disillusionment. I'm not ready for this reversal of roles, she thought, as if I've become the mother and she's become the child. The thought left her feeling trapped as she wandered restlessly around the living room, glancing at the piano, compressing one key soundlessly, wishing she could sit down and play. She leafed through some sheet music that had been left standing against the music rack, but Mary needed sleep, and the piano would keep her awake. In the kitchen only the stove light was on. Tess opened the refrigerator door, realized what she was doing, and closed it again, went to stare out the window over the sink at the lights coming from the house across the alley.

What was the matter with her? It had been an unsettling day, and there was more to come tomorrow, facing Judy and watching her mother be taken into surgery. She felt the stress at the base of her skull. She missed work already, missed the vital pulse of nonstop activity that marked her days, especially this time of day. Like every other profes-sional musician she knew, her schedule of recording, promoting and performing had left her with the inner timetable of a coyote. Daytime she lay pretty low. Nighttime, she howled.

But it was only nine P.M. in Wintergreen, with no howling to be done.

If she were at a concert venue right now she'd be performing. If she were in Nashville she'd be on Music Row in a glass box, wearing a headset, recording.

She picked up the kitchen phone, the only one in the house, and punched out four numbers before realizing the sound of her voice would carry and wake her mother. Hanging up again, she headed out to the car for her cellular phone. Passing the black square of turned earth where Kenny had planted her mother's garden, she relived her angry embarrassment at how he'd snubbed her.

So, what did she care? He was just some dorky neighbor she'd avoid while she was here and wouldn't have to bump into once she left.

The garden, however, halted her footsteps. Picked out by moonlight, it was easily distinguishable from the paler blue of lawn. It raised within Tess an inexplicable surge of exasperation. What did a seventy-four-year-old single woman with two bad hips and a millionaire daughter need with a garden in the first place?

Kronek's house was all lit up, upstairs and down, and his garage door was still up. Another car was parked on the apron-she hadn't seen it arrive-and she wondered whose it was. What did she care? The way the houses were situated, she'd be spending the next four weeks watching all the comings and goings over there, but what Kenny Kronek did with his home time was of absolutely no interest to her.

She took the phone back inside and closed up the house for the night before heading upstairs. There were Kronek's lights again as she reached the top of the steps and the unavoidable window. Irritated, she snapped down the shade and sat on her bed to call her agent, Peter Steinberg, in L.A., where it was only seven P.M.

"Hi, Peter."

"Mac," he said, "where are you?"

"In Wintergreen."

"Your mom come through the surgery okay?"

"It's not till tomorrow."

"Oh. Hope everything goes okay. Well, listen, I'm glad you called..." He launched into updates on the cancellation penalties they were facing after canceling two of her venues for this month, and informed her the label executives had chosen a specific photographer they wanted to hire to shoot her next album photos and that they needed a firm title for the album ASAP so that final plans could be laid for Fan Fair-a week of meeting and greeting fans that was coming up in June. MCA intended to promote the new album there and the title had to be fixed soon. Also, word had been passed down from the promotions department at MCA that Tower Records in Nashville had requested an in-store autographing sometime during the week of Fan Fair. Was Tess interested in doing it?

When they'd finished their conversation she called her publicist, Charlotte Carson, and left a message on her answering machine about handling the invitation from Tower Records, instructing her to call them and answer yes. She told Charlotte to follow up the phone call with a personal letter and include a presigned publicity photo with it when she sent it to Tower. Also, could Charlotte please let the people at Putnam's know that she was definitely interested in being included in the calendar of country western singers they were planning to publish, but when did they need her photo? Could they wait until the new one was done?

Then she called her stylist, Cathy Mack, leaving another message about the photographer MCA wanted to use, assuring Cathy that Tess would want her to do hair and makeup on the cover photo, no matter who did the shooting. She'd talk to Cathy about it when she had more details. Lastly, she called her secretary in Nashville and once again got an answering machine. "Hi, Kelly, it's me. Just thought I'd let you know I got here okay and I'm at my mom's house. Sorry I didn't get a chance to call before this, but you had my mobile number so I figured you'd get to me if anything important came up. Listen, Peter's been working on cancellations and he managed to get us out of Lubbock and Fort Worth, so take them off the schedule. There may be cancellation penalties, so check the contracts and let me know. Also, I forgot to let Ivy Britt know where I'll be for the next month, so please call her and tell her I want to see that song the minute she finishes writing it-we're on a deadline with the album and I still haven't picked the last two songs. Give her Mom's number and my mobile number. Tell her I really like her work and want to use her material again on this album, but I can't if she doesn't come through with it soon. Oh, yes, and MCA wants me to use some photographer they like. Will you get his name and address from them and a list of his credits? If you can get a couple samples of his work as well, that'd be nice. One more thing-the Minnesota State Fair invited me to perform there summer after next, but I need some numbers on attendance and specifically concert takes, both daytime and evening. Will you round them up for me and overnight them to me here? Well... guess that's all for tonight. Surgery is set for six-thirty tomorrow morning so I expect I'll be at the hospital all day long. I'll keep my cellular phone with me, so use that number if you have to. Okay, thanks for keeping things going at that end, Kelly, talk to you soon."

When her business was done-a misnomer, for her business was never actually done-she found her pajamas and went downstairs to take a bath, tiptoeing on the creaking stairway. In the bathroom, the water pipes seemed to sing like a boiling teakettle, so she ran them at a dribble to keep from waking Mary while the tub filled. It took forever to get four inches of water. She hated tubs, preferred showers.

Once in the water she lay back, studying the pinkish-colored plastic tiles with swirls of gray running through them like the lines in Strawberry Revel ice cream. Right below the shoulder-high top tier of tiles, a one-inch strip of black belted the room. It was absolutely hideous, so she closed her eyes and thought about the album in progress.

She had eight solid songs on tape but ten were requisite. Her producer, Jack, always liked to record eleven, so they could scuttle one if they wanted to. She needed three more songs for this album. Finding good material-that was the key to success in this business. Nashville had fantastically talented musicians, but they had to have the song before they could do their work, and there were a lot of successful singers waiting to snatch up songs by the best songwriters.

So Tess had gotten into music publishing and hired a stable of twelve songwriters. She wasn't stupid, she knew that a performer's life is limited, and when her voice started to go the royalties from the publishing company would continue to bring in a magnificent income that would assure her a lifestyle of wealth and ease, no matter how old she lived to be.

But that still left the problem of which three songs she'd find to complete the album. Ivy Britt wrote good ones, but she was so slow. Sometimes it took her months to complete a song. Tess planned to spend some time at the piano writing while she was here. It was the perfect time, when business distractions were held at bay and her duties caring for Mary would leave her ample time to compose.

Maybe she'd write about coming back home and what it was like.

An opening line came into her head, and she hummed it.

One-way traffic crawlin' 'round a small town square She hummed the melody four times, then sang the words softly to the rhythm of the faucet dripping into her bathwater. It entered the world in 4/4 time, in major chords, as an upbeat ballad.

She thought of a second line.

Eighteen years've passed since she's been there... And a third.

Been around the world, now she's coining back...

What rhymed with back? Clack, flack, hack, attack, cognac. Wrong syllable accented on cognac. Track, attack, bric-a-brac...

Tess opened her eyes and sat up to soap her washcloth, humming the verse and trying to come up with a last line. She tried a couple.

Feeling like she's somehow gotten off the track...

Trying to fit in here but she's lost the knack...

Neither of them pleased her, so she went on trying others. And so it went, the birth of a song. Some of them happened this way, an extension of what Tess was living, taking her experiences to a subliminal plane of creativity that spoke to her as if she had no part in the creating.

By the time she dried and powdered and put on her silk pajamas, she had the first three lines pegged and was impatient to get upstairs and write them down.

In her bedroom, she sat at her old dressing table and got the words on paper, wishing she could go down to the piano and pick out the chords she heard in her head. Unlike most country singers she had never played guitar. Piano was the instrument on which all three McPhail girls had been given lessons. She had tried guitar, but her fingers were too short and it ruined her fingernails, so she'd given it up. But often Tess envied the band members who could pick up their instruments on a bus or in a motel room and play, sing, or compose wherever they were.

At eleven o'clock she crawled into her old bed and turned out the light. At midnight she was still awake, energized by the song, kept awake further by the strange mattress that was far from comfortable.

The last time she looked at her clock it was 1:38 and she knew it would be hell rolling out at 4:30.

CHAPTER THREE.

Tess slept through her alarm and awakened with a start when her mother called up the stairs, "Tess? Time to get up, dear. It's five after five already."

Five after five... Lord o' mercy, did people actually get up at such a reprehensible hour?

"Okay, Mom, I'm awake," she croaked, and sat up unsteadily. A faint peachiness had begun tinting the east window shade. She scratched her head while peering at it with one eye squinted. Pulling herself to the edge of the bed by her heels, she tried to fix in her mind the fact that she really had to rise and get dressed. No time for a shower-oh, shoot, that's right, there was no shower, only a tub.

Her head felt like the surf was up at the base of her skull. "Hey, Momma?" she called, shuffling to the railing and calling down. "Where we going again?"

"To Poplar Bluff." Wintergreen was too small to have a hospital of its own.

"Thirty minutes?"

"Thirty minutes, same as always."

Heading for the stairs, Tess passed the east window and pulled up the shade to verify that it really was the sun coming up. It was. In about twenty minutes or so it would splat up right over the top of Kenny Kronek's house. Grimacing, she jerked the shade back into place and grunted off in search of her toothbrush.

With little time for morning ablutions, she managed with only a quick splash and a smear of lipstick before dragging on jeans, cowboy boots, and a polo shirt over which she pulled a white sweatshirt with the word Boss plastered across the front in huge black letters. She spared time to hook on her earrings-she felt naked without earrings, no matter what kind of clothing she had on-then clattered back downstairs to see what she could do with her hair. While she was in the bathroom realizing the hair was hopeless on such short notice, Mary called from outside the door, "You just about set, Tess? We should be leaving."

"Yeah, just a sec."

In the end she finally rubber-banded it into a frowsy tail and pulled the tail through the hole of a bill cap that said Azalea Trail 10K Run across the top. Boy, did she look bad. But surgery schedules wouldn't wait, and her mother was hovering outside the bathroom door with her purse handle over her wrist.

Tess told her, "I'll take your suitcase out and put it in the car, then I'll come back to help you down the back steps. Now, you wait for me, okay?"

She returned to the house to find Mary in the kitchen with her hand on the light switch, surveying the room as if afraid she might never see it again. Her eyes moved in an affectionate sweep over her aged possessions: the stove on which she'd cooked for decades, the glass canisters shaped like vegetables with chips on the edges of their covers, the worn countertops, the garish wallpaper, the table with that ugly plastic doily getting uglier by the day.

On the doily sat the potted ivy. Mary's eyes stopped on it. "I watered my houseplants yesterday, so they should be okay."

"Everything will be just fine back here. I'll take care of everything."

"Judy brought milk and bread for you, and some ham-burger she put in the freezer. Oh, and eggs! The eggs are fresh."

"Don't worry about me."

Still Mary hesitated, looking back at the room. Tess waited while her mother searched for other excuses to delay. A single word, uttered last night by Kenny Kronek, came back to Tess. "Scared?" he'd asked, hunkered down beside Mary's chair. At the time Tess had so much resented his presence and his familiarity with her mother that she'd disregarded the conversation. Now, watching Mary's hesitation, she realized she herself hadn't bothered wondering if her mother was scared to face this second surgery. It appeared she was.

"Come on, Mom," she urged gently. "We'd better go. I'll take care of everything, don't worry."

They left the house with the sun bending their long shadows against the back steps and up the wall beside the door. Watching her mother cling to the sturdy iron railing while painfully negotiating the three steps, Tess felt pity, and the greatest wave of love since she'd arrived home. She'd given little consideration to what her mother had been going through with the cartilage in her hips deteriorating. Principally, she'd thought, It's a common surgery today. A lot of people have it. She'll pull through just fine like she did the first time. Watching Mary's painful struggle from the house-the first time she'd observed her on steps-brought her condition into sharper focus. Tess took her momma's arm and helped her along the narrow back sidewalk toward the alley.

As they passed the newly planted garden, Mary said, "You'll water the garden, won't you, Tess?"

"Sure I will."

"The hoses are-" She tried to turn and point, but winced and shot a hand to her hip, trying not to gasp aloud.

"I'll find the hoses. Don't worry about it."

"If you don't know where anything is, just ask Kenny. The yard's going to need mowing before I get back, but maybe you can get Nicky to do it. He's pretty busy with his sports right now, so I don't know if he'll have time, but... well, you can ask him. Otherwise, sometimes if Kenny sees it needs doing, he just comes over and does it without asking."

Oh, for Pete's sake! Was she getting sick of hearing about Kenny! Fat chance she'd ask that man anything.

They reached the Z and Tess opened the passenger door, but it was apparent from Mary's first effort that getting into the car was going to be too painful for her. The seat was low slung and would require her to bend too far.

"Mom, wait! It's..." Tess glanced at the closed garage door. "This is silly... can you stand here and wait while I get your car out? I think we'd better take it instead."

"I think so, too."

"Have you got the keys in your purse?"

"No, they're on the hook beside the door."

Tess ran back to the house and got them, but before getting Mary's car out of the garage she had to move her own. She maneuvered it backward into the cramped alley, left the engine running and got out.

Mary said, "Use the activator on my key chain. I've got a new automatic garage-door opener."

"You do? Wow! Way to go, Mom!"

"Kenny installed it for me."

Tess's exuberance soured. Saint Kenny the Garage Door Installer. What did the guy do, live over here?

The new garage door rolled up smoothly and Tess shimmied into the crowded building beside her mother's sensible five-year-old Ford Tempo, backed it out, got out to transfer Mary's suitcase... and found her mother smiling at Saint Kenny himself, who'd come walking over from across the alley. He was dressed in gray sweats and moccasins and hadn't showered or shaved yet. His brown hair stood in tufts as if shot with a pellet gun. His skin looked rough with morning whiskers. He didn't seem to care.

Tess stood beside her mother's car, motionless and ignored while her Z idled in a rich baritone.

"Morning, Mary," he said pleasantly.