been much of a father, have I? I’ve always tried to give you everything you wanted, but it wasn’t enough.”
“But I love you, Daddy,” Tracy ventured.
“Do you?” Phillip asked. “I suppose you do, in your own way. But it’s the wrong way, Tracy. I can’t live my life for you. I can’t decide whom to fall in love with simply on the basis of what you want. And I can’t let you dictate who will live in my house and who won’t.”
In her own mind, Tracy mistcok the sadness in Phillip’s words for weakness. “But they don’t belong here, Daddy,” she protested once more. “I don’t see why you can’t see that. Carolyn and Beth don’t even like it here. All they want is our money!”
The tenseness in her father’s jaw told Tracy she had made a mistake, and she instinctively shrank back in her chair. Her father’s eyes were coldly furious now.
“I’m not going to hit you,” he told her. “Perhaps I should, but I won’t. I don’t believe in that sort of thing. But I will tell you this now, Tracy, and you had better listen and you had better understand, because I won’t tell you again. From this moment on, you will treat Carolyn with all the respect you would give your own mother, or any other adult woman. I don’t care anymore how you feel about her. The only thing I care about is how you treat her. From now on, you will be friendly and helpful and polite, whether I am in the house or not. As for Beth, yes, she will be coming back here to live. And it won’t be because she has no other place to go. It will be because both her mother and I love her very much. And you will treat her the same way you will treat Carolyn. You will go even further. You will make friends with Beth, unless she’s not interested in being friends with you. In that case, you will simply be polite to her, and stay out of her way. When she comes home tomorrow, you will tell her you are sorry about what happened to her father, and you will apologize for having poisoned her horse—”
“It was my horse,” Tracy exploded. Suddenly she was on her feet, glaring at her father with naked fury. “It was my horse, and I had the right to do anything I wanted to it! And it’s my house, and I can act any way I want to here, and you can’t stop me. I hate you!”
Phillip rose to his feet. “Very well,” he said softly. “If that’s the way you feel, there’s only one thing I can do. In the morning, I’ll make some calls and find a school for you.”
“Good!” Tracy shot back, her feet planted wide apart on the carpet, her face a mask of angry belligerence. “And I hope it’s as far away from here as you can get!”
“Oh, it will be,” Phillip replied. “But of course since you’ll be there year-round from now on, we’ll have to find one that has no vacations. Also, of course, one that has no horses.” He looked down, his eyes fixing on his daughter. “No privileges of any sort, I should think,” he said softly. “It appears that you’ve already had far too many of those.”
Tracy searched her father’s face, trying to see if he really meant what he was saying. “I … I’ll run away!”
Phillip shrugged. “If you do, then you do. But if I were you, I’d think about it pretty hard. I understand life can be pretty rough out there for a girl of your age.” Then he turned and left the library, closing the door quietly behind him. Tracy, frozen with rage and disbelief, stood perfectly still for a moment, then went to the bar and began throwing the glasses at the door, one by one.
Phillip and Hannah met at the bottom of the stairs as the first crash of breaking crystal emanated from the library. The old woman’s eyes widened, and she almost dropped the small overnight case she carried in her right hand. She said nothing, but her eyes questioned Phillip.
“It’s Tracy,” he said mildly. “She’s a little upset right now, but I imagine she’ll calm down when she runs out of glasses. If she asks you to clean up the mess for her, please do me the favor of playing deaf.” He thought he heard her gasp as her head