"The kitchen looks the same," she remarked while Mary turned on the water and began filling a coffeemaker.

"It's old but I like it this way."

The kitchen had white metal cupboards with brown Formica tops that were so worn they looked white in places. No matter how many times Tess had scolded Mary for not using a cutting board, she continued doing her chopping directly on the Formica to the left of the sink. The kitchen walls were papered in a ghastly orange floral, the two windows hung with orange floral tie-backs from a mail-order catalogue. There was a wall clock with a painting of a lake on its face, an electric stove with a chip in the porcelain where Judy had clunked it with a kettle one time when all three girls were fighting about who would make the popcorn. And beside the stove, on the dull brown Formica countertop, a homemade pecan pie loaded with about three hundred calories per slice.

Tess's eyes moved no further. "Oh, Momma, you didn't."

Mary turned around and saw what Tess was ogling. " 'Course I did. I couldn't let my little girl come home and not find her favorites."

What was it about being called her little girl that touched a nerve in Tess? She was thirty-five and had been gone from home since she'd graduated from high school. Her face and name were as familiar to most Americans as those of the president, and her income topped his many times over. She had accomplished it all with her own talent, creativity, and a business acumen worthy of Wall Street. But her mother insisted on referring to Tess as "her little girl." The few times Tess had corrected her, saying, "I'm not your little girl anymore," Mary had looked baffled and hurt. So Tess let it pass this time.