just hope they’re happy, and wish them well, all right?”
Judy regarded her employer with a raised brow. “How come you always manage to be so damned good? And if you are, how come Carolyn wanted to trade you in for Phillip Sturgess in the first place?”
“First, I’m not so damned good, and second, she didn’t trade me in. She chucked me. And it’s over and done with. All right?”
“Check.” Judy turned, but as she was about to leave the office, Beth burst in, her face blotched and streaked with tears. She threw herself into her father’s arms, sobbing. Judy Parkins, after offering Alan a sympathetic look, slipped out of the office, quietly closing the door behind her.
“Honey,” Alan crooned as he tried to calm his daughter. “What is it? What happened?”
“Th-they hate me,” Beth wailed. “I don’t belong there, and they all hate me!”
Alan hugged the unhappy child closer. “Oh, darling, that isn’t true. Your mother loves you very much, and so does Uncle Phillip—”
“He’s not my uncle,” Beth protested. “He’s Tracy’s father, and he hates me.”
“Now who told you that?”
“T-Tracy,” Beth stammered. She stared up into her father’s face, her eyes beseeching him. “She … she said her father hates me, and that by the end of the summer, I’ll have to go live somewhere else. Sh-she said he’s going to make me!”
“I see,” Alan replied. It was exactly the sort of thing that had happened in the spring, when Tracy had last been home from school. “And when did she tell you this?”
“A little while ago. Everyone was in … in the library, and I was by myself in the living room, and she came in, and she told me. She said that now that her grandfather’s dead, her father owns the house, and … and he’s going to make me go away!”
“And was anybody else there?”
Beth hesitated, then shook her head. “N-no …”
“Well, I’ll bet if Uncle Phillip had heard Tracy say that, he’d have turned her over his knee and given her a spanking. Maybe I’d better just give him a call, and tell him.”
Beth drew back, horrified. “No! If you call him, then Tracy will know I told, and it’ll just be worse than it already is!”
Alan nodded solemnly. “Then what do you think we ought to do?”
“Can’t I come and live with you, Daddy? Please?”
Alan sighed silently. This, too, was something they’d been through before, and he’d tried to explain over and over why it was best for Beth to live with her mother. But no matter how often he explained it to her, her reply never changed.
“But I don’t belong there,” she always said. “They’re different from me, and I just don’t belong. If you make me stay there, I’m going to die.”
And sometimes, when he looked into her huge brown eyes, and smoothed back her soft dark hair—the hair she’d inherited from Carolyn—he almost believed she was right.
He stood up, and took his daughter by the hand. “Come on, honey,” he said. “I’ll drive you home, and well talk about it on the way.”
“Home?” Beth asked, her eyes suddenly hopeful. “To your house?”
“No,” Alan replied. “I’ll drive you back to Hilltop. That’s where you live now, isn’t it?”
Though Beth said nothing, the eager light faded from her eyes.
2
Alan Rogers turned off River Road, shifted his Fiat into low gear, and started up the drive.
“Almost there.” When there was no response from Beth, he glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. She sat huddled against the door, her eyes clouded with unhappiness.
“Act as if,” Alan said. Beth turned to face him.
“Act as if? What does that mean?”
“It means if you act as if things are all right, then maybe they will be. Don’t think about what’s wrong—think about what’s right. It helps.”
“How can it help? Pretending doesn’t change anything.”
“But it can change how you think about things. Like that apartment I lived in for a while. The one above the drugstore?”
A hint of a smile played around Beth’s mouth. “You hated that place.”
“Indeed I did. And why shouldn’t I have? I wasn’t living with you anymore, and I missed you terribly. And the apartment was small and dark and empty. It was awful. And then one day Judy came over.”
“Judy Parkins?”
“The very same. Anyway, I was griping about how bad the place was, and she asked me what I’d do with it if I liked it.”
“But you didn’t like it,” Beth protested. “You hated it!”