Why not? What was she afraid of? She would go to Mendocino! She would talk to Lani, and try to discover if she was really happy. She did not admit it to herself, but she knew she would try to convince Lani to come back to South San Francisco with her, to take up their life again just as it had been before. And even if she didn't come, what better way was there to spend a weekend but with her lovely young daughter, just the two of them?

A great smile radiated across the voluptuous secretary's beautiful face, turning what had been anxiety into excitement. She would go first thing in the morning, it would only take a few hours to drive to Mendocino, and then she would see her precious child again. She fumed happily towards the kitchen, suddenly hungry now, and then stopped.

To hell with dinner, she thought to herself enthusiastically, I've got to figure out what to wear! She rushed into her bedroom, alive and happy for the first time in many, many months, and almost danced over to her closet. Her mind was already soaring far beyond South San Francisco, far beyond the small confines of her too small apartment. She was already in Mendocino, in the hot, hot sun, lying on a grassy hillside and holding her innocent young daughter in the gentle embrace of her loving arms. Her daughter? Her life!!!!

CHAPTER TWO

"Bob, you just don't understand," Lani Walker was saying, "your home life was so screwed up, you just can't see what I'm talking about. I love my mother… we've got a really beautiful thing between us, you know?"

Lani lay on her back, her eyes searching the cloudless California sky, her bare toes playing little games with the golden brown grass that covered the hills of Mendocino.