her cheeks, and then realized that they were all staring at him.
He had no excuses to make. He admitted it all. He sympathized totally with Ward, and told him he had a daughter the same age, but he also tried to tell them some things about Anne, about how lonely she had been, how marked by giving up her child, how guilty over what had happened in the Haight-Ashbury. He explained how her earliest memories of their seeming indifference went back to when she was a tiny child, and she had felt rejected by all of them all her life. He made no excuses for himself, but he explained to them who Anne Thayer was, and her parents sat there, realizing what a stranger she had been to them. And this unknown child, who had come to reject them eventually too, had found Bill Stein, and sought everything from him, and in his own loneliness he had nurtured her. Perhaps it was wrong, he admitted with damp eyes, but it was sincere. He echoed exactly what Anne had said to them, though in a kindlier tone. In less than a year, he planned to marry her, with or without their consent, or even GaiI's, once she found out. He would have preferred everyone to wish them well, but this had gone on long enough, and if he could have married her sooner, he would. She could continue school, she could do anything she wanted to, but when her eighteenth birthday came, he would be waiting for her, whether they would continue to let him see her now or not.
And as he quietly said the words, she sat there and beamed at him. He hadn't let her down, and he was willing to risk anything for her. He was exactly what she had always believed him to be, and the three other Thayers were shocked, most of all Ward, who stared at this unexciting-looking man and couldn't understand what his daughter saw in him. He wasn't beautiful or young, handsome or debonair. He was actually rather banal, and his looks were very plain. But he had offered something to their child that they had never been able to give her. And whether they wanted to see it or not, she was happy with him. She sat there now, blooming quietly in the sunlight of his love. They really didn't care what was done to them in the next year. Both were willing to wait, and after that it was clear what their plans were. And suddenly both Ward and Faye believed they would. One couldn't fight them at all, no matter how wrong it might be, or how great the age difference, or how big a fool they thought Anne was.
After he left, and they had lectured Anne, Ward and Faye talked quietly in their room. They didn't know what to make of him, and they had told her they didn't know if there would be charges or not. Bill had gone home to make a clean breast of it with Gail, and would be happy to speak to them at any time. He wasn't really apologetic with them. After two years of loving her, he felt he had relatively little to apologize for. He hadn't hurt her or abandoned her, used her, or done anything terribly wrong. By now she was almost eighteen, and it didn't seem shocking to the lovers anymore. He suspected Gail would be stunned at first, but she would get over it too. And they had their lives to lead, Anne and Bill. Both had made that perfectly clear to everyone.
“What do you think?” Faye sat in a chair and looked at Ward. He still couldn't see what she saw in the man, and she was only seventeen years old. It was mind boggling.
“I think she's a damn fool.”
Faye sighed. This was worse than some of the movies she'd done. “So do I, but that's our opinion, not hers.”
“Apparently.” He sat down across from his wife, and took her hand. “How do they get themselves into these things? Lionel with his damn inclinations to something I don't understand. Val with her crazy career, Vanessa living with that boy in New York, and thinking we don't know about it.” Faye smiled, they had talked about it before. She thought she was so exotic and unusual, and it was so transparent, they all knew what was going on, and they didn't really mind. She was twenty years old