Her mother hadn’t offered to help her when Francesca bought the house and opened the gallery, and she knew she wouldn’t help her now. She thought the house a foolhardy investment and didn’t like the neighborhood, and like Todd, she would advise Francesca to sell it. If they did, they would both make a profit. But Francesca didn’t want the money, she wanted to stay in the house, and she was convinced there was a way to do it. She just hadn’t found it yet. And her mother would be no help with that. She never was. Francesca’s mother wasn’t a practical woman. She had relied on men all her life, and used the alimony and settlements they gave her to support her jet-set lifestyle. She had never made a penny on her own, only by getting married or divorced, which seemed like prostitution to Francesca.

Francesca was totally independent and wanted to stay that way. Watching her mother’s life had made her determined never to rely on anyone-and particularly not a man. She was an only child. Her father, Henry Thayer, was no more sensible than her mother. He had been a starving artist for years, a charming flake and a womanizer, until, eleven years ago, he had the incredible good fortune to meet Avery Willis, when he was fifty-four. He had hired her as an attorney to help him with a lawsuit, which she won for him, against an art dealer who had cheated him out of money. She then helped him invest it instead of letting him spend it on women. And with the only genius he had ever shown, in Francesca’s opinion, he had married Avery a year later, she for the first time at fifty, and in ten years she had helped him build a solid fortune, with an investment portfolio and some excellent real estate. She talked him into buying a building in SoHo, where he and Avery still lived and he still painted.