Abby opened the invitation as Karen climbed the long incline of the drive. “How long till my birthday?”

“Three more months. Sorry, Charlie.”

“I don’t like being five and a half. I want to be six.”

“Don’t be in too much of a hurry. You’ll be thirty-six before you know it.”

When the house came into sight, Karen felt the ambivalence that always suffused her at the sight of it. Her first emotion was pride. She and Will had designed the house, and she had handled all the contracting work herself. Despite the dire warnings of friends, she had enjoyed this, but when the family finally moved in, she had felt more anticlimax than accomplishment. She could not escape the feeling that she’d constructed her own prison, a gilded cage like all the others on Crooked Mile Road, each inhabited by its own Mississippi version of Martha Stewart, the new millennium’s Stepford wives.

Karen pulled into the garage bay nearest the laundry room entrance. Abby unhooked her own safety straps but waited for her mother to open her door.

“Let’s get some iced tea,” Karen said, setting Abby on the concrete. “How do you feel?”

“Good.”

“Did you tee-tee a lot this afternoon?”

“No. I need to go now, though.”

“All right. We’ll check your sugar after. Then we’ll get the tea. We’re going to have some fun today, kid. Just us girls.”

Abby grinned, her green eyes sparkling. “Just us girls!”

Karen opened the door that led from the laundry room to the walk-through pantry and kitchen. Abby squeezed around her and went inside. Karen followed but stopped at the digital alarm panel on the laundry room wall and punched in the security code.

“All set,” she called, walking through the pantry to the sparkling white kitchen. “You want crackers with your tea?”

“I want Oreos!”