but she didn't want to impose on them. She said she was going to get a hotel room at the airport and go home in the morning. But they wanted her to stay there, Frank said he owed her at least that after never having her around for all those years. And she couldn't help thinking about how different her life would have been if he had been. But her mother would have spoiled it for her anyway, and she had decided he was probably right. The best thing her mother had done for her was leave her. It had saved her ultimately, she couldn't have survived the beatings forever.
They gave her a lovely guest room with a view of the Bay and the Golden Gate Bridge, and in the morning a maid served her breakfast in bed. She felt like a princess. And she decided to call Peter before she left for the airport. He was off duty for a change, and thrilled to hear her.
She told him about the Waterfords, and he was happy it had gone so well, and he was also happy that her mother hadn't been there to see her. Like Frank Waterford, he was sure that nothing would have changed, and she would have found some way to hurt Gabbie. He wasn't surprised by anything Frank had said, and he was so relieved that her search was over. She sounded very peaceful. She said she was coming home that night, but as he listened to her, he had a better idea. He had four days off for once, and he said he loved San Francisco.
“Why don't you stay there?” he suggested. “I'll meet you.” She hesitated for a long moment, not sure what to say to him. This was only the very beginning for them. But at least she felt as though she had finally left all the ghosts behind her. She had made peace with them at last. Joe, Steve, even her parents. She understood better now what had happened to her. Frank was right in a way. She hadn't been very lucky when they'd been handing out parents. It was like being struck by lightning. And for all those years, she had believed everything was her fault. The beatings, the cruelty, their abandoning her, even the fact that they hadn't loved her. She had been willing to accept the blame for everything. And she realized now that even what had happened to Joe hadn't been entirely her fault. Ultimately, he had made his own decision. “What do you think?” Peter asked her about his coming out again, and slowly she smiled as she looked at the view from the Waterfords’ guest room window.
“I'd like that,” she said, willing to let herself have it, able to let him in now. She didn't know what would happen between them, but if it was good, and right for them, it seemed possible now that she deserved it. She no longer felt as though she was eternally damned, or destined to be punished. That was why she had come here, to be relieved of the burdens they had doomed her to live with, and she had finally done it. Her life sentence had been lifted.
“I'll fly out this afternoon. I can meet you somewhere. I'll get a hotel room,” Peter said enthusiastically, but when she told the Waterfords he was coming out and she was moving to a hotel, they insisted she stay there with him. They were the kindest, most hospitable people she had ever met, and they seemed to genuinely want her to be there with them.
“I want to check out this new son-in-law of mine, before you make a mistake,” he teased Gabbie. She had told them how they had met, and what had happened with Steve Porter, or whatever his name was. They were horrified by the story, but anxious to meet Peter.
And after she left in a cab to go to the airport, Frank told his wife how sorry he felt about her, what hell her life must have been as a child. And he blamed himself for not seeing it, or Eloise for the monster she had been. It made him feel good now to do what he could to make it up to Gabbie. And he was pleased to see that she had a good head on her shoulders. He thought it remarkable that she had survived all she'd been through.