Amen.” Rory fingered the beads of her mother’s coral rosary, but her mind wandered. A recurrent theme with her right now. Was her illness a type of payback for all the good things that had been her life, until now? She could never remember being unhappy. True, her father left when she’d been a toddler, but she had no memory of him. Her mother got through medical school on a small inheritance and made ends meet. To Rory, her mom had been no less than perfect. Rory had been eleven when Vivian Baricelli met Paul Parnell. He’d told her that she looked just like her mom—freckles, wavy auburn hair, and lilac-colored eyes. And he told her how he had always wanted a little girl. After they married, Mom explained that Paul wanted to legally adopt her and change her name from Barricelli to Parnell, but that they did not know the whereabouts of Tony Barricelli. Rory loved Paul and was in awe of her new brothers. Dan had just left for college, but Frank was still in high school—class president, varsity sports, honor student.
