Free Blessing in Disguise by Eileen Goudge Page A

meaningless as a “fact-finding mission.” It was her fury that had given her the strength to cope that first day, and the one after. She had run on empty, without food, drink, sleep, sustained only by the great buzzing wall of red behind her eyes.
    But by the morning of Gene’s funeral, she’d had to drag herself out of bed to wake the girls ... and then had crumpled to the floor, crushed by grief. Even now, she could feel its weight pressing down on her. The years had only served to wear it down, smoothing it like a stone at the bottom of a riverbed, which anchored her even while it dragged at her.
    “So where does that leave us, Dan?” she asked him, keeping her voice soft, but taking little care to round its sharp corners.
    “I’m going to have to hold off writing that check,” she heard Dan say through the rushing of blood in her ears. “Until this whole thing blows over ... or until ... well, we’ll see. I know you had your heart set on this, Dellie, but Gene, I think, would have been the first to agree with me that you don’t pick up a hot potato unless you want to get your fingers burned.”
    How dare you? she wanted to cry out. How dare you use Gene against me? This is for him, not for me. For him!
    And the deadline for the architects’ competition was less than eight weeks away. Six carefully selected firms at which talented people were slaving away, building models, preparing drawings on great sheets of paper ...
    Cordelia felt an urge to slap Dan Killian’s mealy potato face. But she immediately shook it off. After all, he wasn’t at fault, not really.
    It was Grace who deserved to be slapped.
    Cordelia had to draw on every last bit of willpower to rise from her chair and hold out her small hand to be swallowed up by Dan’s huge, cushiony one.
    “I was just thinking, Dan, that if all those years ago you had asserted yourself a bit more, the night of our junior prom, we might not be having this discussion today. I might even have married you. I’m glad for both our sakes that I didn’t.” Hearing the words escape her, she felt shocked. And saw that Dan was, too, judging from the scarlet flush spreading upward from the folds of his neck. She drew herself up to her full five feet two inches and added, “If there’s one thing I’ve learned in fifty-nine years, it’s that we all do what’s best for ourselves in the end. That’s what made Gene so extraordinary, don’t you think? He always put his own needs last. But I don’t want that to be his monument—a memorial to him that didn’t get built because the concerns of others came before his.”
    “Dellie, I—”
    “Don’t apologize.” She stopped him. “Nothing has changed as far as I’m concerned. I’m sure that once this bit of gossip has died down you’ll see your way clear to doing the right thing. Oh, and Dan”—she put out a small, coral-nailed hand that didn’t quite meet his sagging shoulder, and allowed a sad smile to surface—“the creek’s high from all that rain we had this summer. Lots of tadpoles. Come on by one of these days, bring the grandkids.”
    Dan nodded sheepishly.
    As he ushered her to the door, obsequious as a maître d’ at one of those overpriced restaurants that were springing up like toadstools around Blessing, Cordelia remembered her lunch date with Sissy. Oh, how she wished she could go straight home instead, to her garden ... and to Gabe.
    Sissy was also insisting they stop afterwards at that dreadful new shopping mall near Mulberry Acres, out on what, in her day, had been the old Fullerton estate. Her daughter was still looking for the perfect dress to wear to her tenth-anniversary party. The trouble was, she’d been looking for that dress since September, and here it was almost November, and she still hadn’t found it.
    With a sigh, Cordelia made her way out of the plush-carpeted hallway above the First Citizens Bank of Blessing—which her grandfather had founded, and her father had