Free Coming Out by Danielle Steel

mother.
    “He's still not going,” Max said with a serious expression.
    “I know.” Olympia smiled at her youngest son.
    “You're not mad at him anymore?” Max was concerned.
    “No. He has a right to his opinions.” As she said it, Harry walked back in, and she spoke directly to him. “Although your position about not going to the ball is actually discriminatory. You're discriminating against WASPs.”
    “They're discriminating against blacks and Jews.”
    “I guess you're even then,” she said calmly. “I'm not sure one discrimination is better than the other. It seems about the same to me.”
    “You've been talking to my mother,” he said, tossing the salad. “She just wants an excuse to get dressed up. You all do. You're losing sight of what this kind of thing means.”
    “It's just a rite of passage, Harry. There's no malice behind it, and the girls will be disappointed if you don't go. That seems worse to me, hurting people you love and who love you, in order to make a statement to people you don't know, and who won't care that you're not there. We will.”
    “You'll be fine without me. Max and I will stay here.”
    “What are they going to come out of?” Max asked, still confused about what the girls would be doing, and how Charlie would help them, while his mother and grandmother watched. Although he knew his father disapproved.
    “The girls are going to walk out on a big stage, under an archway of flowers, and they will make a curtsy, like this.” She demonstrated it for him, sinking gracefully with her head up and back straight, and then coming back up again with her arms extended like a ballerina.
    “That's it?” Max looked intrigued, as Harry went to turn the steaks on the barbecue. He had seen her curtsy and pretended he didn't. He didn't want to know.
    “That's it. It looks better in a long dress.”
    “That looked pretty good.” Max looked impressed. His mother was pretty, and so were his sisters. He was proud of all of them, and Charlie and his dad, too. “Do the girls know how to do that?” He hadn't seen them practice and it looked hard to him. He suspected correctly that it was harder than it looked.
    “Not yet, but they will. They'll have a rehearsal that afternoon before the ball.”
    “I bet they do it better than everyone else,” Max said with certainty. “What will Charlie do?”
    “He'll stand next to Ginny while she does it, and then give her his arm, and they'll walk down the stairs. And afterward, the girls will dance with their dad.”
    “Both of them at the same time?” It sounded complicated to Max.
    “No, one at a time.” The other twin could have danced with Harry, if he'd been there, and then switched. This way, without him, they would have to take turns.
    “Who's going to walk Veronica down the stairs?”
    “We don't know yet. Veronica has to figure it out by Thanksgiving.”
    “He better be good, so he can catch her if she falls over while she does that thing you just did, or if she falls down the stairs.” Harry and Olympia both laughed and their eyes met, as he put their steaks on plates. And then suddenly Olympia laughed at the memory of her own escort. She hadn't thought of it in years.
    “My date got drunk before we got out onstage. He passed out, and they had to find another boy to go onstage with me. I'd never met him before, but he was very nice.”
    “I bet they got really mad at the one who got drunk.”
    “Yes, they did.” She remembered, too, and didn't mention, that it had been the last time she danced with her father. He had died the following year, and later she had cherished the bittersweet memory of her last dance with him. It had been an important night for her, just as she hoped it would be for the girls. Not a life-changing moment, but one that, in retrospect, had always meant a lot to her. She had never given it any particular social importance or significance. It had just been a night when she felt special and important, and