But while Lani had been able to salve those wounds with the simple fact of her presence, she had not been able to heal the scars they left on Ann's personality, and on her sexual being in particular. Anything that remotely reminded the young mother of the traumatic experience she had been through with her immature husband was avoided, shoved into the far recesses of her mind to lie hidden behind an almost neurotic wall of repression. She had been hurt irreparably, and she had subconsciously placed the blame for all her troubles on the sexual side of her nature. She feared any kind of intimate involvement, and rejected coolly all advances made by the scores of men drawn irresistibly to her, with the result that, as the years passed, her sexual frustration increased. And as it increased, her fear of her own sexuality increased as well, and she expended more and more energy to keep that sexuality hidden, disarmed, incapable of leading her into relationships that might prove painful or destructive.

And so she moved from place to place, thinking she was avoiding entanglements that would divert her attention from her young daughter, but in reality simply trying to escape the undeniable pressures exerted on her by her own seething sensuality. She had begun by moving around the east coast, from Delaware to South Carolina, and then her fears had driven her west. Each time she would move into a city, find a dull and usually poorly paying job, and try to settle with Lani into some kind of routine that resembled stability. She knew, instinctively, that her daughter needed that stability, and that she herself needed it as well. She would slowly make a few friends, and begin to come out of her shell slightly, and then she would find herself being drawn to one of the many men who pursued her with stubborn persistence.

At first those men would seem content with a purely platonic relationship, and Ann would perceptibly bloom on the release of having someone to talk to, someone with whom she could break through the icy walls of her self-imposed aloofness.