“Don’t you dare make me smile. I’m pissed at him.”

“It’s Christmas,” he said. “Our last one with them living at home.”

“Low blow.”

She let him put his arms around her. “Let’s not ruin this, okay?”

“JoJo, the idiot boy, promises to marry a girl—”

“Someday—”

“—and I’m the one who is endangering Christmas.”

“Zach and Lexi are not going to school together, Jude. Stop worrying. This is nothing. I promise you.”

“Fine,” she finally said. “I will keep my opinion to myself.”

“Yeah,” he said, smiling indulgently. “And you’re so good at that.”

Jude sighed. “I’ll try. But I’ll tell you this, Miles. They better go to separate schools.”

Moving with an uncustomary stiffness, Jude went back into the great room and returned to her place at the end of the table. Miles held out her chair for her and squeezed her shoulder as she sat down.

The mood had changed. There was no mistaking the sudden quiet. Mia and Zach were both looking at her with the wariness of the guilty.

She managed a tight smile and said, “Don’t you just love it when it snows for Christmas?”

Someone answered—honestly, she barely knew who it was. Perhaps her mother, saying something about the weather.

Jude’s hands were trembling just a little, and if she were a woman who had to worry about her blood pressure, she would have worried now. She understood suddenly why so many of her friends had warned her about the stresses of senior year. It was only December, and already their lives felt out of kilter, as if the warm water that had always buoyed them up had abruptly begun to drain away. There was danger in shallow water, unseen shoals. Like love and parties and children who lied to you.

“I need to return that pink sweater,” Mia said at one point. “It’s way too big. I want to get something to wear to Timmy’s party on Saturday. You want to come to the mall with me, Mom?”

Jude looked up. “Timmy’s party?”

“It’s on Saturday, remember?” Mia said.

“You two are not going to a party on Saturday,” Jude said, stunned that they would even think to ask.

Zach looked up sharply. “You said we could go.”

“That was before you called me, drunk, at one-twenty to come pick you up.”

“You said we should call you,” Zach said. “I knew we’d get into trouble for it.”

“You let them go to a party?” her mother said, her carefully arched eyebrows raised. “With alcohol?”

Jude drew a deep breath and exhaled it to stay calm. The last thing she needed now was parenting advice from a woman who’d handled motherhood as if it were radioactive waste. “You did the right thing by calling. I’m glad you did. But you also got drunk, and that’s the wrong thing. We’ve talked about this.”

“We learned our lesson,” Zach said. “We won’t drink again. But—”

“No buts. This is the last week of winter break, and I want to spend it as a family. We’re going to Molly and Tim’s tomorrow, and your grandmother’s gallery is having a special show on Monday night. Ty and Lexi are welcome to come over as much as you want them to, but no party on Saturday.”

Zach started to come out of his chair. Miles put a hand on his son’s shoulder, guided him back down.

“I knew it,” Zach muttered, slumping into his seat, scowling.

Jude tried to find a smile again and couldn’t. Maybe God had designed senior year so that mothers like her could let their children leave home. If this kept up, it would be easier than she’d thought.

* * *

In January, on the last day of winter break, precipitation began as an icy, misting rain but quickly transformed into lacy white flakes that frosted fence posts and telephone wires. Soon, the roads were thick with new snow and red safety cones appeared at the bottom of steep hills. Kids bundled up and went out to sled on the barricaded hills; their moms stood by in groups, talking among themselves and taking pictures.

Lexi and Zach were at her house, snuggled up together in her twin bed. On her bedside table, a scented candle burned brightly, dispelling the slightly damp-smelling air that always came to the mobile home when the windows were shut.

“My aunt will be home soon.”

“Define soon.”

She grinned at him and smacked his arm, then rolled away and got out of bed. “You promised your mom you’d finish your college apps today, and she’s been so pissed off lately, I don’t want to make her mad again. So move it.” She got dressed and headed for the door. She meant to walk right out of her bedroom and go straight to the kitchen table, where the paperwork for college was arranged in neat piles.

At the last minute, she weakened and turned around.

He lay in her bed, naked, her tattered blue comforter across his hips, his bare feet stuck out from the end. His smile worked its magic; she moved toward him. When she got close, he reached up and curled his warm hand around the back of her neck, pulling her down for a kiss. Just before his lips touched hers, she heard him say, “I love you so much.” It took all her willpower not to crawl back in bed with him.

“You’re a sex maniac.”

“Takes one to know one.”

Something about his smile, or the green of his eyes and the love she saw, something caught her then. How could she let him go away to college? Just walk away from her?

“Come on. I want your mom to keep liking me, and I told her I would make sure you finished the USC app today. You know she’s going to check.”

“What if I just missed the deadline?” he said.

“You won’t. Now get your ass up. You need to finish putting everything together.”

“Our last day of break and we have to do stupid shit,” Zach grumbled, throwing the covers back. He saw the way she reacted to his nakedness and he grinned wolfishly, but before he could say anything, Lexi left the bedroom and sat down at the kitchen table.

Zach slid into a seat beside her, propping his elbow on the table. “Lex?”

She looked at him. “What?”

“I want to go wherever you go. Really.”

He leaned forward and kissed her, and she thought about how it would feel to let him go, to say good-bye. It was all well and good for him to say he wanted to be with her, but that was a distant cousin to going with her. To be with Lexi, he’d have to stand up to his parents and disappoint Mia, who was more than just a sister. It would never happen, so there was no point dreaming about it.

“Come on,” she finally said. “I don’t want to piss your mom off again. Let’s finish up and get going. Mia says everyone is sledding on Turner Hill.”

* * *

In February, Zach and Mia turned eighteen. The magic number convinced them that they were adults; suddenly they questioned every rule and restriction. Curfews struck them as irrelevant now, unnecessary. They were constantly testing the limits and wanting more freedom.

As the weather warmed, class parties sprung up like mushrooms on the roadside. Blooming instantly. All it took was a phone call and a fake ID in someone’s hand. My parents are gone became the class motto, the equivalent of a clan call. Kids arrived at empty houses or on the beach or in the woods with fifths and six-packs and Baggies of pot. Some parents chose to host the parties themselves, rigorously taking car keys, but if no “cool” parent could be found, well, the party must go on.

The whole scenario had exhausted Jude, worn her to a frazzle. She felt more like a warden than a parent, and the constant battling with her twins about safety and compromise and good choices had weakened her. She no longer believed them when they said they wouldn’t drink. At first she had clamped down, denied them, but that had only driven them to sneak out, which led to more clamping down—and more angry rebellion. Every day felt like a mountain to climb, every night they spent at home a triumph.

On top of all that was the college pressure. It had become a cauldron that held them all, parents and kids; the water was heating up fast. One question was asked over and over: have you heard? It was asked mother to mother at Safeway, in line at the post office, or on the ferry.

Honestly, Jude was as nervous as her kids about it.

Even now, on this gorgeous March afternoon, when she should have been gardening, she was standing at the window, staring up the driveway. It was almost three-thirty. The kids had just gotten home from school. They’d torn through the kitchen like locusts and then gone upstairs.

“You’re wearing a groove in the floor,” Miles said from the living room, where he was reading the newspaper. He had had a surgery cancelled today and come home from the hospital early.

She saw a flash of white.

The mail was here.

She grabbed her coat and stepped into the garden clogs on the porch and headed up the gravel driveway. At the top of the hill, she pulled open the mailbox and saw what she’d been waiting for.

A nice thick envelope with the USC emblem on the upper left corner.

It wasn’t absolute proof, of course, the thickness of the envelope, but everyone knew it took a lot of pages to welcome a student and only one to reject.

Then it struck her. One envelope.

She let out a sigh and reached for the rest of the mail.

And there it was. At the bottom of the stack.

A second thick envelope with the same logo.

Jude hurried back down the driveway. Once inside the house, she yelled out for the kids.

“Did something come?” Miles asked, taking off his reading glasses.

Jude tossed the heap of mail on the entry table and showed him the two special envelopes. “Mail call,” she said, feeling suddenly nervous. She had to say it twice—yell it, really—and then the kids came hurrying down the stairs.

Jude handed Zach the envelope with his name on it.

Mia snatched the other envelope, ripping it open as she walked away. Not more than ten feet away, she spun around. “They accepted me!” A grin burst across her face and then faded as she looked at her brother. “Zach?” she said nervously.

Please, Jude prayed. Let it be both of them.

Zach opened the envelope and read the letter. “They accepted me.”

Jude’s shriek could have shattered glass. She launched herself forward to sweep Zach and Mia into a family hug.

“I’m so proud of you guys.” She waited for Zach to hug her, but he was too stunned to move. Finally, she stepped back, beaming at them. “Both of you at USC. It’s your dream come true.”

“We have to call Lexi and Ty,” Mia said. She grabbed Zach’s hand and pulled him toward the stairs.

“And the crowd goes wild. Come on, Mama Bear,” Miles said, coming to stand beside her. “I’ll pour us champagne.”

Jude stared up the empty stairs. “Why are we the only ones celebrating?”

“We’re not. They’re upstairs calling all their friends with the good news.”

“That blows,” she said, looping her arms around his waist and looking up at him.