The Villa

dangling off the floor.
    The habit, as old as she could remember, never failed to bring a bubble of happiness to her chest. "If I can't do the nose, could I just do another in my left ear? For a little stud?"
    "If you're bound and determined to put more holes in yourself, I'll think about it." He paused by Theo's door, knocked with his free hand.
    "Get lost, creep."
    David looked down at Maddy. "I assume he means you." He pushed open the door to see his son stretched out on the bed, the phone at his ear, rather than sitting at his desk with his homework.
    David felt twin pulls. Annoyance that the assignments were certainly not done, and pleased relief that Theo had already made new friends at school to interfere with his studies.
    "Call you back," Theo muttered and hung up. "I was just taking a break."
    "Yeah, for the entire month," Maddy commented.
    "There's plenty of stuff you can nuke for dinner. I left the number of the restaurant on the pad by the phone, and you've got my cell number. Don't call unless you have to. No fighting, no naked strangers in the house, no touching the alcoholic beverages. Finish your homework, no phone or TV until it's done, and don't set fire to the house. Did I leave anything out?"
    "No blood on the carpet," Maddy put in.
    "Right. If you have to bleed, bleed on the tiles."
    He kissed the top of Maddy's head, then dropped her to her feet. "I should be home by midnight."
    "Dad, I need a car."
    "Uh-huh. And I need a villa in the south of France. Go figure. Lights out at eleven," he added as he turned away.
    "I've got to have wheels," Theo called after him, and swore under his breath as he heard his father walk down the stairs. "You might as well be dead out here without wheels." He flopped back on the bed to brood up at the ceiling.
    Maddy just shook her head. "You're such a moron, Theo."
    "You're so ugly, Maddy."
    "You're never going to get a car if you nag him. If I help you get a car, you have to drive me to the mall twelve times, without being mean about it."
    "How are you going to help me get a car, you little geek?" But he was already considering. She almost always got what she wanted.
    She sauntered into the room, made herself at home. "First the deal. Then we discuss."
     
    Tereza was not of the opinion that a parent stepped back at a certain point in a child's life and watched the proceedings in silence. After all, would a mother stand on shore and watch a child, whatever her age, bob helplessly in the sea without diving in?
    Motherhood didn't end when a child reached her majority. In Tereza's opinion, it never ended. Whether the child liked it or not.
    The fact that Pilar was a grown woman with a grown daughter of her own didn't stop Tereza from going to her room. And it certainly didn't stop her from speaking her mind as she watched Pilar dress for her evening out.
    Her evening out with David Cutter.
    "People will talk."
    Pilar fumbled with her earrings. Every stage of the basic act of dressing had taken on enormous proportions.
    "It's only dinner." With a man. An attractive man who'd made it perfectly clear he wanted to sleep with her. Dio.
    "People find fuel for gossip in a thought. They'll run their engines for some time over you and David socializing together."
    Pilar picked up her pearls. Were pearls too formal? Too old-fashioned? "Does that trouble you, Mama?"
    "Does it trouble you?"
    "Why should it? I haven't done anything to interest anyone." With fingers that seemed to have grown outsized and clumsy, she fought with the clasp.
    "You're Giambelli." Tereza crossed the room, took the strand from Pilar's hand and hooked the clasp. "That alone is enough. Do you think because you chose to make a home and raise a daughter you've done nothing of interest?"
    "You made a home, raised a daughter and ran an empire. Comparatively, I fall very short. That was made clear today."
    "You're being foolish."
    "Am I, Mama?" She turned. "Just over two months ago you tossed me into the business, and it's taken me no time at all to prove I have no talent for it."
    "I shouldn't have waited so long to do so. If I hadn't tossed you in, you'd have proven nothing. Years ago, I came here with specific goals in mind. I would run Giambelli and see it was the best in the world. I would marry and raise children, watch them grow happy and healthy."
    Automatically she began to rearrange the bottles and pots on Pilar's vanity. "One day I would pass what I'd helped build into their hands. The many children