Wendy Franklin was very close to her mother. With her father dead for many years, the two of them could have split apart, as so often and tragically happens, but her mother had always been fair and understanding, directing without being domineering, and above all, loving.

And Wendy loved her mother deeply in return. Her mother might be old and no longer interested in men, for example, but she had once been young and knew what it was like to be Wendy's age. She allowed her to go out on dates and lots of other things without a bunch of silly regulations some of the other mothers placed on their kids – like being home from a school prom at midnight, and not allowing the girls to go on anything but double dates. Her mother had always insisted that the mark of maturity was trust, and so she made sure that her daughter was instilled with the proper ethics and morals and then trusted her to do the right thing. She never tried to cling to her growing child, nor constantly think in terms of her as her "baby", and was more than pleased when Wendy was interested in the ways and morals of sex and reproduction, of explaining the mysteries of monthly cycles when Wendy had first begun to menstruate when she was eleven, went out of her way to buy training bras and then larger ones as Wendy developed.