Surprise Dad Read Free

chest. But she couldn’t weaken. “Yes, Mom, Mike hired me. Just now. It’s simply amazing that you already know.” She took a chance and smiled.
    Elaine merely sniffed and kept on with that look. “It was very kind of him, too,” Allie continued, “because I don’t think he really needed anyone.”
    “No, he didn’t.”
    “How do you know that?” This time Allie tried for a teasing tone.
    Another sniff. Worse, Allie observed, her mother was baking, which she’d always said was cheaper than a psychiatrist. Steadily, she forged ahead. “I’m grateful, too, because I’ll be able to handle my personal expenses and pay you a smidgen of rent.”
    A pan of her legendary sugar cookies in her hand, Elaine said, “I don’t want rent! I don’t want you to be a waitress. Aren’t you a little overeducated for that?”
    The reference to her education filled Allie with guilt. When her father died, he’d left her mother enough to live modestly. Allie knew her college years had required sacrifices over and above the scholarships she’d been given. Still, she couldn’t get caught up in a guilt trip. She’d feel even guiltier if she went back to med school and ended up being an incompetent doctor. She said calmly, “I need things to do and a little money coming in while I decide what career I really want to pursue.”
    “A medical career! It’s what you’ve always wanted.”
    “It was what I’d always wanted,” Allie said quietly. “Turns out I was wrong.”
    “What you’ll do is settle back into the valley, neverwant to leave, be a waitress for the rest of your life,” her mother said sadly. “I’ve seen it happen to plenty of people.”
    “Even if I turn into one of them, may I still have a cookie?” Allie asked, and in return, got a look that sent her scampering up to her room with a stack of cookies and a mug of tea sloshing perilously as she ran.
    When she was a kid, her bedroom had been her oasis, although then she’d never felt alone and thirsty in the desert the way she did now. As a child, she’d adored her parents, and after her father died, she’d become even closer to her mother. Until now, when a stone wall had risen between them.
    Not even her room felt the same. Being home was strange, like trying to wear clothes she’d outgrown. The tension between her mother and her made it so much worse.
    She’d come home without calling to avoid the inevitable argument as long as possible, but now she felt she hadn’t done the right thing. Her mother had been shocked, shocked by Allie’s sudden appearance, shocked by her decision to take a semester off to reflect on her medical career, and a shocked mother, apparently, was a mother playing motherhood for all it was worth.
    “How could you do this?” she’d sobbed piteously. “How could you throw away a promising career?”
    “I didn’t throw it away. I just need some time to think.”
    Logic and explanation hadn’t calmed her mother in the least. Resigned, Allie searched her closet, hoping to find the black slacks and white shirts she’d worn to waitress at Mike’s restaurant for so many years.
    There they were, clean, starched and perfectly ironed. That was the kind of mother she had—or was untilAllie had disappointed her by wanting to rethink being a doctor.
    After she found the clothes, she took a good hard look at her room. It was exactly as it was when she’d left it for college—pink and flowery. The cloying peony-printed wallpaper was half-hidden with pictures of friends, dried corsages, party invitations dating back to first grade, camp awards, school awards, her Phi Beta Kappa key, diplomas—her entire past, such as it was. As for the present, nothing in the room indicated the person she was now.
    Not that she had a clue as to who that woman was. All her life, Allie had known what she wanted to do. She’d chosen a path and stuck to it industriously until a few months ago, when, engaged in a special summer project, she’d