Carol thought, smiling a bit as Aubrey and Grace selected just which
stuffed animal should have the privilege of a visit to Grandma's. The
fact was, Carol had to admit, Grace was better at the job than she had
been herself. The girl listened, weighed, considered. And maybe that was
best. She herself had simply done, decided, demanded. Grace was so
biddable as a child, she'd never thought twice about what unspoken needs
had lived inside her.
And the guilt stayed with her because she had known of Grace's dream to
study dance. Instead of taking it seriously, Carol passed it off as
childish nonsense. She hadn't helped her baby there, hadn't encouraged,
hadn't believed.
The ballet lessons had simply been a natural activity for a girl child
as far as Carol had been concerned. If she'd had a son, she'd have seen
to it that he played in the Little League. It wasa just the way things
were done, she thought now. Girls had tutus and boys had ball gloves.
Why did it have to be more complicated than that?
But Grace had been more complicated, Carol admitted. And she hadn't seen
it. Or hadn't wanted to see.
When Grace came to her at eighteen and told her she had her summer job
money saved, that she wanted to go to New York to study dance, and
begged for help with the expenses, she'd told her not to be foolish.
Young girls just out of high school didn't go haring off to New York
City, of all places on God's Earth, on their own. Dreams of ballerinas
were supposed to slide into dreams of brides and wedding gowns.
But Grace had been dead set on following her dream and had gone to her
father and asked that the money they'd put aside for her college fund be
used to pay tuition to a dance school in New York.
Pete had refused, of course. Maybe he'd been a little harsh about it,
but he'd meant it for the best. He was just being sensible, just looking
out for his little girl. And Carol had agreed wholeheartedly. At the
time.
But then Carol watched as her daughter had worked tirelessly, saved
every penny, month after month. She'd been bound and determined to go,
and seeing it, Carol had tried to nudge her husband into letting her.
He hadn't budged, and neither had Grace.
She was barely nineteen when that slick-talking Jack Casey came around.
And that was that.
She couldn't regret it, not when Aubrey had come from it. But she could
regret that the pregnancy, the hasty marriage and hastier divorce, had
driven a thicker wedge between father and daughter.
But what was couldn't be changed, she told herself and took Aubrey's
hand to lead her to the car. "You're sure this car Dave has for you runs
all right?"
"Dave says it does."
"Well, he ought to know." He was a good mechanic, Carol thought, even if
he had been the one to hire Jack Casey. "You know you could borrow mine
for a while--give yourself more chance to shop around."
"This one will be fine." She hadn't even laid eyes on the secondhand
sedan Dave had picked out for her. "We're going to do the paperwork on
Monday, then I'll have wheels again."