“'Fraid not, dear. Are you sure your ears aren't infected? They look pinkish.”

“They're fine. Relax, Mom. Lucy says if they begin to throb, to take a Tylenol.”

“A professional opinion is always appreciated,” Molly said dryly, “but if they're not paler by this evening, I'm taking you to the clinic for a second opinion. Lucy's not my idea of trustworthy expertise.”

“Okay, okay,” Carrie mumbled with a mouthful of muffin and jam. “You're the boss.”

“I don't want to be the boss,” Molly replied on a quiet exhalation. “I just want us to get along. And I don't want problems… like your ears falling off,” she went on, slipping her arms into an Irish tweed jacket in an unusual lavender tone. “I don't want you looking like an eighteen-year-old starlet when you're eight either. And why the hell do terrorists keep killing innocent people?”

“I think they don't have land or food or something.”

“It was a rhetorical question,” Molly murmured half to herself as she searched through her purse for her car keys which were misplaced again. “Have you seen the car keys?”

“On the counter in the bathroom.”

“In the bathroom?”

“Face it, Mom, you're not organized.”

“Don't get smart, kid, at eight o'clock in the morning or I'll-”

“What, Mom?” Carrie teased.

“Just eat now,” she muttered. Intimidating threats were not part of her repertoire with her daughter. She loved her too much. “I'm leaving in five minutes, and if you're not ready you'll have to take the bus to school.”

“Mommmmm!” It was a long, drawn-out wail. “Don't be cruel.”

Molly paused in the doorway, remembering the unwritten code apropos bus riding. No one ever rode the bus unless every other possible option for transportation to school had been wrung dry and discarded. Inadvertently, she'd struck a raw nerve of childhood protocol. “Don't panic, I'll wait. I'm the owner, right? I can come in when I want. But hurry,” she reminded her daughter. Owner or not, if she didn't put in long hours every day her fledgling business, which seemed to be creeping into the black after two precarious years, could just as easily go under. That would make her ex-husband Bart happy as hell. And she'd resist that happening with the last breath in her body.