Just before the close of the bank day, my father appeared. He nodded at me and went directly to his office to handle whatever he had missed while away. From the moment he had entered to the moment he began wrapping up to take us home, my heart beat faster and at times fluttered with my anxiety.

“Let’s go, Corrine,” was all he said until we were in the carriage and on our way.

I sat quietly, my hands in my lap, my eyes lowered, waiting and thinking that the next words he uttered would be the most important of my life. When we rounded the turn to take us out of Alexandria proper and onto the road to our home, he finally looked at me.

“I had a message delivered to your mother before I returned to the bank,” he began.

Oh, how I dreaded this, but also how surprised I was that he had chosen such a formal way to reveal it all to her.

“Her heart will break,” I said, now feeling more miserable than I had in the morning or even after I had spoken with Nurse Rose.

“Maybe not,” he said.

I looked up quickly. “Why not?”

“I wanted her to know that we’re having a guest for dinner,” he said. He didn’t smile. He continued to look forward.

“What guest? Nurse Rose?” I thought immediately.

“No.” He turned to me. “Garland Foxworth,” he said.

I didn’t think he was going to say anything more. We rode on for nearly a minute in silence. Was it because it was painful for him to say any more?

“Why is he coming to our home, Daddy?”

“I always imagined that the big things that happen to us in our lives, the directions we take, are as currents in a stream. Sometimes they are smooth, graceful, and gentle, and sometimes they are raging. Wisdom, whatever I possess, tells me that you have to know what sort of current you are in and what exactly you can do about it.

“If it’s the raging current, you can battle it and smash yourself or be smashed against obstacles, boulders, whatever. In the end, the current will have its way anyway, or you can choose to not only let it carry you but swim faster than it can carry you.

“That’s the choice you have now, Corrine. Garland Foxworth has the same choice. I confronted him with all my rage, but I don’t think he was so intimidated that he would make a decision because of me. Actually, surprisingly, he was more upset. He was in tears.”

“Garland was?”