And then the baby had been born, and it had seemed again that they might be able to function as a unity and live together, this time through the mediating influence of their daughter. But it was soon apparent that even little Lani could not act as a bridge to cross that chasm which lay between the two of them. For eight tempestuous months after her birth, they had made life miserable for one another, until finally Ann had discovered that Tom was having an affair with a woman in the same apartment building, and she'd decided to leave him. It hadn't surprised her that he was having an affair, because she hadn't slept with him for months, and yet that affair gave her the excuse she needed to rationalize in her own conscience the step she was taking.

The divorce proceedings had been short, and unprotected. Tom had been just as willing Ann to break off their obvious mismatch. She had been awarded a small alimony, but most important of all for her, she had been awarded custody of her child, Lani.

The insistent blaring of a horn gradually broke through the curtain of Ann's memories, and she looked up to see that traffic had again begun to move on the Bayshore. She quickly moved ahead, and gradually picked up speed until she was going a relatively brisk 45 miles per hour. Her mind was somewhat at ease now, pacified by the turn her thoughts had taken in the direction of her daughter.

Ann smiled again. Lani had been such a beautiful baby, had hardly ever cried, had walked before she was 18 months, and was talking by the time she was 2 old. She was Ann's one joy in life, and had become gradually over the years her only real reason for living. After the trauma of her marriage, Lani had formed the cornerstone of her sanity, and for a year after her divorce, the two of them had constituted a self-sufficient entity, with little or no contact with the outside world. Without that time with her child, alone, to recuperate from the wounds which her marriage had left upon her, Ann might very well have broken down completely.