Being female wasn’t just an act of fate, in Carol Monroe’s mind. It was a duty. She prided herself that though she was coming uncomfortably close to her forty-fifth birthday, she still managed to resemble the china doll her husband had once called her.

They’d been courting then, and he’d taken some trouble to be poetic.

He usually forgot such things these days.

But he was a good man, she thought. A good provider, a faithful husband, and a fair man in business. His problem, she knew, was a soft heart too easily bruised. Grace had bruised it badly simply by not being the perfect daughter he’d expected her to be.

These thoughts came and went as she helped Grace gather up what Aubrey would need for an afternoon visit. Seemed to her children needed so much more these days. Time was, she would stick Grace on her hip, toss a few diapers into a bag, and off they’d go.

Now her baby was grown, with a baby of her own. Grace was a good mother, Carol thought, smiling a bit as Aubrey and Grace selected just which stuffed animal should have the privilege of a visit to Grandma’s. The fact was, Carol had to admit, Grace was better at the job than she had been herself. The girl listened, weighed,considered. And maybe that was best. She herself had simply done, decided, demanded. Grace was so biddable as a child, she’d never thought twice about what unspoken needs had lived inside her.

And the guilt stayed with her because she had known of Grace’s dream to study dance. Instead of taking it seriously, Carol passed it off as childish nonsense. She hadn’t helped her baby there, hadn’t encouraged, hadn’t believed.

The ballet lessons had simply been a natural activity for a girl child as far as Carol had been concerned. If she’d had a son, she’d have seen to it that he played in the Little League. It was . . . just the way things were done, she thought now. Girls had tutus and boys had ball gloves. Why did it have to be more complicated than that?

But Grace had been more complicated, Carol admitted. And she hadn’t seen it. Or hadn’t wanted to see.

When Grace came to her at eighteen and told her she had her summer job money saved, that she wanted to go to New York to study dance, and begged for help with the expenses, she’d told her not to be foolish.

Young girls just out of high school didn’t go haring off to New York City, of all places on God’s Earth, on their own. Dreams of ballerinas were supposed to slide into dreams of brides and wedding gowns.