Crossroads Read Online Free PDF

family . . . and I didn’t want you to hear it from anyone but me.” She paused. “Of course, I knew how intelligent you were. I was sure if you had any questions you would have asked me.”
    But I do have questions,
Gwen thought.
Lots of them. I just
never felt like I could ask them.
    And then, because hope springs eternal, she asked her biggest one, “Why did you pick me?”
    And still clinging to hope, she waited for her mother to say,
Because I fell in love with you the second I saw you.
Or, perhaps,
Because I couldn’t imagine my life without you.
    “I had wanted children throughout my first marriage,” Cassandra said.
    Was it Gwen’s imagination or was she speaking a little too carefully?
    “And after he . . . my husband . . . died, and I saw you . . . it seemed like a golden opportunity . . . and . . .”
    Gwen knew it wasn’t her imagination; her mother, who always knew what she wanted to say, who was always so sure of herself, was stumbling. And hope died. “But it wasn’t a golden opportunity,” Gwen said slowly. “You made a mistake.”
    Her mother gave a little gasp. “No, Gwen!”
    “You thought you wanted a child but you really didn’t. It’s okay, Mother. Everyone makes mistakes. . . .” She was trying to sound like a grown-up intelligent girl of seven, but her voice broke on the last word.
    “That wasn’t it. . . . It was . . . ” And for a second Gwen thought her mother was going to say what it was. But then Gwen spoiled everything by starting to cry.
    Cassandra dropped her reserve and got down on her knees to look Gwen in the eye. “Gwen, I’ve never ever regretted it!” she said. And then she added something that Gwen would ponder for years. “No matter how it started out, I am so glad I did it. Always remember that.”
    *                           *                           *         
    Gwen checked her face again in the mirror. Then she caught herself and had to laugh.
What are you hoping will happen?
she mocked herself.
You’re still you. You haven’t suddenly become a
tropical flower.
Still she looked herself over carefully, her simple outfit, her lack of makeup, her hair held off her face with a clip.
You’re enough. Grow up and believe that you’re enough.
But the mind saying something intelligent like that and the heart believing it were two entirely different things.
    *                           *                           *         
    Gwen realized that not all of her difficulties could be attributed to her mother’s strange shifts in mood. There was a longstanding argument, she knew, about the influence of nature versus nurture on a child. And from the very beginning Gwen’s nature had been . . . unusual. Ordinary experiences could trigger ideas and fantasies in her that didn’t occur to other more . . .well, usual children. A case in point had been the Face in the Window Incident.
    When she was quite small, Gwen had seen her own reflection in a window. When she’d moved in a certain way the vision of her face had vanished altogether; when she moved again it reappeared, but it was distorted. This had brought up thoughts that were slightly disturbing, but also fascinating. She’d tried them out on Nanny Sarah.
    “How do I know I’m real,” she asked the woman. “How do I know I’m really here?”
    “What silly questions. You’re a real little girl, and you’re right here. Where else would you be? Now eat your lunch.”
    But Gwen couldn’t let the subject drop. “But what if we’re all just a part of a daydream some creature—one that’s much bigger and stronger than all of us, like God—is imagining. What if it decides to stop imagining us some day and we all just disappear!”
    This had brought on sputtering from the nanny about the Bible and good little girls not saying such things.
    Later, Gwen overheard the nanny telling the