Blessing in Disguise Read Online Free PDF Page B

Daddy and she would put up a fight. No one had ever been able even to disagree with him without Mother’s jumping to his defense.
    Wasn’t that what her mother had done with Win, too? Closing her ears to the truth about her precious son-in-law. Even, in her own charming way, trying to bully Grace into staying with him. Pushing and prodding until Grace finally had blown up at her. Since then she and Mother hadn’t spoken except to exchange forced pleasantries over the phone.
    “Talk to her,” Jack urged softly, as if echoing her thoughts. “Explain why you’re doing this, and see if you can get her on your side.”
    “I’ll try,” she told him, placing her palms against his chest, hoping some of his calm and sureness would somehow flow through to her. “But after all this time, she’s probably convinced herself that her version—the one she and Daddy cooked up—is the true one.”
    “I’ll bet she hasn’t forgotten that you’re her daughter.”
    “Maybe, but I’m not exactly high on Mother’s list right now.”
    “Nobody could ever accuse you of being a quitter,” Jack said with a teasing smile. “Anything you want, you go after with a howitzer.”
    Including you? Is that what it’ll take to pin you down, Jack?
    But she didn’t say the words; they remained lumped in her throat as she went about tearing apart lettuce leaves and tossing them into the monkey-pod bowl that had been Sissy’s wedding present to her when she married Win.
    Sissy—with her husband of nearly ten years, and her two boys—who had once gushed that nothing could be more fulfilling for a woman than marriage and motherhood. At the time, Grace had been in the midst of a divorce, with an eleven-year-old son who was barely speaking to her, a grand total of four hundred dollars and eighteen cents in her savings account to tide her over until Win’s settlement check arrived, a beat-up Honda with eighty thousand miles on it, and four silver chafing dishes, wedding presents she’d never gotten around to exchanging, going black in her closet.
    The last thing she’d wanted then—and she’d vowed to herself that it would be forever—was to get married again.
    So what happened? Grace wondered now.
    “Delicious,” Hannah said, delicately bringing her fork to her lips. “Honestly, Grace, it’s the best lasagne I’ve ever tasted.”
    Grace glowed, feeling a surge of gratitude that she knew had to be vastly out of proportion to what had been merely a polite remark ... and certainly no reflection on her talent as a cook. Then she noticed the tiny smirk prying at the corners of Hannah’s mouth as she chewed, and her heart lurched. Could Hannah have guessed somehow ... or had Chris spilled the beans?
    She glanced over at Chris, head down, shoveling food in like there was no tomorrow. No, Chris probably hadn’t even noticed that the stuff on his plate wasn’t what she’d cooked.
    Grace wanted to feel kindly toward Hannah. It was hard to picture this lanky girl with her heavy black hair tied back in a loose ponytail, wearing a baggy sweatshirt over even baggier jeans, as the enemy. At sixteen, Hannah still carried herself with the round-shouldered awkwardness of a young woman not yet accustomed to her height. But, like the breasts Grace could just barely make out beneath the folds of her oversized sweatshirt, there was more to Hannah than what was on the surface.
    I’m exaggerating this whole thing, Grace thought. She just needs time to get used to me. In a rosy flush of sentimentality, Grace imagined what it would be like having a daughter, if only a borrowed one, arranging that marvelous hair of Hannah’s, and having Hannah come to her for advice about boys and clothes and schoolwork.
    She looked across the table at Jack, who sat beaming at her. Just for a moment, she allowed some of his optimism to rub off on her. Maybe everything would be okay after all.
    “... So I told Conrad, if you’re going to act like a Republican, the