Olivia's baby curls were gone. Her hair was darker and clipped short. She'd called me Mommy and was all hugs. Like Delia. Free hugs and warm smiles. Nothing held back.

Lou looked older, heavier. He'd tried to kiss my mouth, but I turned away. We were outside, for Pete's sake. What would Delia's neighbors say? What had they said already?

At first, the visit was stiff, very stiff.

I felt as if I were some kind of bomb all loaded--cocked, engaged--ready to blow. One false move, and they knew I would mushroom everybody to kingdom come.

Then for one brief moment, one odd burst of sunlight second, we all became children again, playing pretend games, and it was almost fun. Seated around the carefully decorated table, we were family--the Brady Bunch maybe or the Waltons.

We did this a long time ago, pretending we were the people we saw on TV or at the movies: Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder, Double-oh-seven and Pussy Galore. I'm Scarlett O'Hara and fiddle-dee-dee.

That's when the fracture closed. "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn." Lou hadn't ever said those exact words, but they radiated off him like heat off desert sand.

Now he was pretending he did give a damn, and somehow he'd sucked Delia--my sweet little sister--into the game. Just like old times.

Just like the time we dug a hole in the side of the hill near the creek under the shady cover of towering birch trees and sweet gums. We were going to dig clear to China and trade the prickly gum balls for fire crackers that we could light on the Fourth of July. We were Little Marco Polos balancing the nation's world trade deficit.

Though we never made it all the way, our steady afternoons finally netted us a great place to play. It was really cool there and dark and safe.

Or so we thought.

A gully-washer of a rainstorm collapsed the whole side of the hill and our playhouse was reclaimed by the black earth. Delia had never liked it anyway, but Lou had convinced her. He was persuasive like that. That was his game: pretending and convincing people. He was a writer, for Pete's sake. That's what they do: suck you in.

What he was still doing.

Delia and I never saw the real China, but Lou had. He and Olivia had together. He'd been doing some freelance stuff for several magazines, and he told me some of the places they'd been. Olivia chimed in with anecdotes almost as good as the color reporting of Harry Caray with the Cubs. Ten years old and she could not only maintain a decent conversation but generate one.

She said the Japanese people were too polite. After two weeks there, she found herself appreciating the indifferent customs agents in New York. "Daddy thought they were rude, but I liked them. They didn't make my face hurt."

"Make your face hurt?" I asked.

"I didn't have to smile all the time and keep bowing," she explained.

Lou said she was a lot like me, but then he said it one time too many, and I realized he was just blowing smoke up my ass. Olivia was the spitting image of her father. Same long nose, same shape of face. She had my hair, poor baby, and the cleft of my chin. I hoped that was all I had given her, but there was that glint in the corners of her eyes that I wanted to read as Blarney.

After dinner, Lou sat down by me twice on the couch, but I moved. Then once, in the kitchen, he'd put his hand on mine, but I slid it away.

I told myself if I didn't blow up the balloon then I wouldn't have to feel the loss of it when the string slipped from my fingers; when it touched the flame and burst; when it sagged all wrinkled in a corner, looking like a spent rubber.

Sure. Sure. Nothing ventured; nothing gained.

Nothing lost either.

As I stretched out beside my little girl as she lay in the sleeping bag Delia had set up in the sewing room, I remembered how scared I was the night she was born. While I fingered back a stray hair--hair the color of mine when I was this age--I remembered feeling so unreal as this living creature was pulled free from my body. Everybody smiled at me that night.

Lou cried. Big tears. He talked to her, calling her the special name he'd made up before we knew she was a she. And Olivia had stopped crying when she heard it. "Wiggles." That's what it was. She wiggled a lot in the "pokey."

Now Olivia slept like some angel. Little bubbles at her mouth. Her tiny fingers laced together. Dainty, like Delia, not me. I was the gangly pony. All bony limbs. Limp hair. A face only a mother could love. Only she loved Delia's face more.

I kissed my sweet baby just where her forehead met her hair so I could smell her girl-nectar at the same time. What rich honey Uncle Dill's bees could have retched up if they'd tapped her sweetness.

Then I opened the window wide and shut the door.

The house was dark and quiet. Delia was in the master suite, and Lou was resting in the bedroom where I'd spent so many nights after Dr. Jack said I could. I wondered if Delia had let him use the yellow sheets. They were softer than the blue flowered ones. Better thread count, I think. I couldn't really see in the shadows as I eased up his window. Or even when I draped the wedding ring quilt over him.

But it didn't matter.