"I have no standing with which to offer advice on love." Miriam sipped her own coffee daintily. She wore gray wool trousers, a pink twin set and a strand of fat, gleaming pearls, making Anissa feel underdressed in her jeans and fuzzy blue sweater. Anissa still admired her mother's grace and elegance, still felt as though she would never measure up. "I believed my own father for hundreds of years when he told me that my lover had fled rather than face fatherhood and marriage. All the ...