For the Girls' Sake - By Janice Kay Johnson Page 0,59

in the closet and ushered the McCloskeys into the living room. Lynn smiled because she didn’t know what else to do.

"What can I get you?" Adam asked.

"White wine," his mother-in-law said with a pat on his arm. She then turned to study Lynn with a thoroughness that might have seemed rude under other circumstances.

"I do see Rose. My dear, you have the same hair!"

"You mean, the same impossible hair?" Lynn laughed ruefully. "And I would have known you for Shelly’s grandmother anywhere."

A crack in her smiling demeanor let pathetic eagerness show. "It’s true, then? Adam said she looks like Jennifer."

The men were talking a few feet away. Lynn bit her lip and asked in a low voice, "He did warn you, then? From the pictures he’s shown me of your daughter, the resemblance is uncanny. I didn’t want you to be taken by surprise."

"He did, and we’ve been so excited about meeting Shelly. With our Jenny gone, you can’t imagine how we felt when Adam told us Rose wasn’t hers. Not that we don’t love Rose. We do, of course. But Jennifer was our only child."

Hoping she sounded more comfortable than she felt, Lynn said, "Yes, Adam’s told me. I know this must be very difficult for you."

Through a shimmer of tears, Angela McCloskey smiled radiantly. "Oh, it was! But now she’s home. Oh! Not that you didn’t give her a home. But, oh, you know what I mean."

Lynn knew exactly what she meant. She chose her next words carefully. "I love Shelly dearly, although I admit that sometimes she’s a mystery to me. Finding out she didn’t carry my genes explained a few things. She’s so fearless! And a chatterbox."

"So was our Jenny. She was so sunny from the moment she was born. People adored her, you know!"

Lynn kept smiling, hard as it was. "I know Adam did."

Or should she say does?

"Well, where’s our little girl?" Rob boomed.

"Why don’t we go on up there?" Adam suggested, adding deliberately, "Rose is excited that you’re coming."

"Rose is such a delight," Angela said confidingly, as Adam herded them toward the stairs. "What a gentle, sweet girl. Perhaps more like you."

Kindly phrased and meant, perhaps, but Lynn had the uneasy feeling she and her daughter both had just been damned with faint praise.

Lynn hung back as they neared the girls’ open bedroom door. Please, please, she thought, don’t scare Shelly. Don’t hurt Rose.

"Girls," Adam said quietly, "your grandparents are here."

Drawn despite herself, a pedestrian to a car accident, Lynn followed the others into the bedroom, where the girls were plumbing the new dress-up box Lynn had begun here.

Rose tried to scramble to her feet but teetered on her high heels. "Grandma. Grandpa."

Shelly had wrapped a purple feather boa around her neck. A glittery tiara tilted rakishly in her hair. She looked like a tiny, garish elf queen.

Staring up, she asked boldly, "Are you my grandma and grandpa?"

Angela McCloskey choked. Lynn couldn’t see her face, but she knew tears must be streaming down it.

Lynn was startled when Adam reached out and took her hand in a bruising grip as he watched the drama unfold. She hadn’t even realized he’d dropped back to her side. Or had she come to his?

Rob McCloskey started to speak and had to clear his throat. "Yes," he said at last, thickly. "Yes, your mommy was our daughter."

"But my mommy’s right there," Shelly began, but stopped as her forehead puckered. "Oh. You mean, the mommy who had me in her tummy."

"That’s right," her grandfather said. "She was once our little girl. Our Jenny."

"Did she play dress-up, too?"

"Oh, yes." Angela knelt beside the trunk and reached in. Her voice was almost steady, but tears tracked mascara down her cheeks. "She was as pretty as you are."

"I’m a princess," Shelly said with satisfaction.

Angela lifted out a filmy white shawl. "A very beautiful princess."

Quiet Rose burst out, "I’m a princess, too, Grandma." Her voice went very soft. "Me, too."

Angela McCloskey won Lynn’s liking and respect forever when she smiled through her tears and held out the shawl for Rose, not Shelly. "Of course you are! Our princess. And this is just what you need to finish your outfit."

Adam’s fingers laced with Lynn’s and he drew her out into the hall. Gently he shut the bedroom door, leaving the McCloskeys alone with their granddaughters. Both their granddaughters.

And then he brushed his knuckles across his wife’s cheek. They came away wet with her tears.

* * *

ADAM PULLED INTO his driveway, laptop and briefcase on the