I didn't know that people come into our lives, and sometimes, if we're terribly lucky, we get the chance to love them, that sometimes they stay, that sometimes you can, truly, depend on them. Cathie Beck was in her late thirties and finally able to exhale after a lifetime of just trying to get by. A teenage mother harboring vivid memories of her own hardscrabble childhood, Cathie had spent years doing whatever it took to give her children the stability-or at least the illusion of it-that she'd never had. More than that, through sheer will and determination, she had educated them and herself...