She’d sneaked romance novels into her bedroom, and in the margins of school notes, invented elaborate baby names like Eldridge and Valeria. Isolated by the twin handicaps of insecurity and overweight, she’d found her greatest pleasure in reading and in babysitting.
But regardless of what her instincts told her, she wasn’t cut out to be a mother. And while Jim Bonderoff might make a decent enough father if he had the right wife, he didn’t, and he might never have. What kind of girlfriend hadn’t bothered to accept his proposal in three months?
What Dex wanted for her daughter was the one thing that had been denied to her: the chance to grow up loved and cherished and nurtured so she could pass those qualities on to her own children. And it was obvious that neither Jim nor his blundering staff members were equipped to give Annie this kind of upbringing.
She turned a corner and swooped down Forest Lane. Mrs. Zimpelman, who was leaning on her rake and listening on the phone, smiled when she spotted the bicycle. She began talking in animated fashion, no doubt boring a friend with the news of Dex’s arrival home.
Across the street, Dean Pipp knelt in the garden snipping herbs into a wicker basket. She wore a floppy black hat, a gingham apron over a shapeless gray dress and a pair of skaters’ pads on her knobby knees.
“Hello, there!” she called. “What did the lawyer want?”
Dex angled her bicycle around the side of the house and came to explain about Helene and Annie and Jim. By the time she finished, Marie had finished gathering her herbs and led the way into her book-filled house.
“I’ll certainly miss you.” The dean removed her apron and knee pads and hung them on a coatrack. “It’s only for a week, though, you say?”
“Or less, if I can persuade him that adoption is the best course.” Dex tried not to dwell on how difficult it was going to be to wrench her daughter away from one self-important father and a pair of no-holds-barred leathernecks.
The elderly woman frowned at a padded envelope lying on her hall table. “Oh, dear, I must have put the mail here and forgotten. What is this?”
Dex glanced at the envelope. It bore the return address of a rare books dealer. “Something you ordered?”
“Well, yes, of course,” said Dean Pipp. “Now I remember. I asked for everything they had about the Richard Grafton controversy. I’m afraid there isn’t much.”
Knowing that her landlady wrote papers about obscure literary matters, Dex tried to dredge the name Richard Grafton from her memory, but failed. “Was he a poet?”
“Oh, surely you remember Richard Grafton.” The dean rattled open a drawer, pulled out a sharp engraving knife and sliced open the envelope to reveal an aging volume. On the cover was imprinted Chronicles of England, by Richard Grafton. “He was a sixteenth-century writer.”
“Refresh my memory,” said Dex.
“It’s all in here.” Her landlady smiled and recited from memory, “‘Thirty dayes hath November, Aprill, June and September, February hath twenty-eight alone, and all the rest have thirty-one.”’
“He wrote that?” Dex asked.
“Yes, but did he write it first?” The dean cocked an eyebrow as if inviting Dex into a fascinating mystery. “There’s a similar poem by William Harrison, written at almost the same time, and rhymes of that nature pop up elsewhere in folklore.”
“I see. So there’s a controversy.” Dex regarded her landlady fondly. Hardly anyone was likely to care who really wrote that bit of doggerel, but she had no doubt that it would make a fascinating article.
“Oh!” Marie dropped the book on the table with a thump. “I nearly forgot! There’s a student in your apartment. She wanted to talk to you about something or other and insisted on waiting. Her name is, let’s see, Coreen or Cara or…”
“Cora Angle.” The student had asked to speak to Dex after receiving a D-plus on a paper. Dex had suggested she drop by so they could have some privacy, but they hadn’t specified a time. “I’d better hurry. She’s upset enough as it is.”
“See you later.” Clearly absorbed in her project, Dean Pipp wandered into the living room, reading the book out loud. She was still wearing her floppy hat.
Hoping that Cora hadn’t been waiting long, Dex let herself out of the house and loped toward the free-standing garage. From the driveway, a straight, weathered staircase led to the apartment. She clattered up and opened the door, which she left unlocked during the day.
The single room looked smaller and darker than usual, by contrast to the expansive scale of Jim’s house. Dex didn’t see anyone, but she heard a tuneless mumble coming from the tiny kitchen. She had to close the door to take a look, because the kitchen was behind it.
Cora Angle, her large frame cramped in the small space, was wiping a dish and carrying on a conversation with herself. “I shouldn’t hang around,” she muttered. “She’s obviously busy. She did promise to see you. I’ll only be in the way.”
One glance at the open cabinets showed Dex that her thrift-store dishes had been rearranged. They were stacked in an orderly manner, the plates and saucers on the lower shelf, cups and glasses on the upper one.
“Oh, hi!” The tall freshman stopped wiping and gave her a tentative smile. Pale blond hair straggled down Cora’s pudgy cheeks, and there was a dust smear on the shoulder of her tan smock.
“You’ve been working hard.” Dex decided not to point out that the new arrangement, while more efficient, put the cups too high for her to reach easily. She could always switch them back later.
“I like to organize things.” The chubby girl watched her apprehensively, as if expecting a rebuke. She reminded Dex of herself not many years ago.
“Well, thank you.” She indicated the half-full coffeemaker. “Care for something to drink?”
“Okay. Sure,” said her guest. “I’m sorry for just showing up. I mean, I know you weren’t expecting me.”
“It’s okay,” Dex assured her. “I told you to drop by, right?”
“Right.” Cora cleared her throat. “Listen, I just came to tell you I decided to drop out. I guess college is too hard for me.”
“If you were smart enough to get in, you’re smart enough to do the work.” Dex frowned as she poured the coffee. She hated to see anyone leave, especially after less than a year. “A lot of people have trouble adjusting. How are your other classes?”
Cora put two spoonfuls of sugar in her coffee and slouched in a seat at the counter. “Cs and a few Ds. College is costing my parents a lot of money, and I’m not doing well enough to justify it.”
“Do you want me to see if there’s financial help available?” Dex refused to give up easily. True, the young woman’s papers and tests had been mediocre and sometimes worse, but she might blossom.
“I’ve already got a partial scholarship.” The young woman shrugged. “Originally, my parents said I should just get a job, but when I won the scholarship, they agreed to help. The thing is, I knew from the first few days that I made a mistake by coming here, but I didn’t want to admit it.”
“What makes you think so?” Dex asked.
The freshman’s forehead wrinkled. “The other kids all seem so sure of themselves. I never know what the teachers expect. I keep trying to guess, and getting it wrong.”
With relief, Dex realized that she might be able to help. “Maybe that’s the problem. You’re too busy trying to second-guess the professors instead of expressing your own point of view.”
“But who would care what I think?” Cora nibbled at the split ends of her hair.