Gwynne Forster - Her Secret Life

“Pretty good. Thanks for the candy. You know I love chocolate.” He nodded toward the flowers. “I love flowers, too, and your mother always had them in the house. They say I can go to the dining room, and we can eat lunch in there.” She went to the nurses’ station, got a wheelchair, helped her father into it and wheeled him to the dining room. Tables for two and four were covered with white tablecloths, vases of flowers and attractive place settings. She moved a chair from one of the small tables, settled her father there and sat opposite him.

“Isn’t this nice?” he said. “You know, they want me to have that operation, but why should I at my age? Seems pretty silly to me.”

She stared him in the face, careful not to glare at him, for she knew he would regard that as sass, a thing he didn’t allow. “What about Vanna and me, Daddy? We’ve lost our mother. Are you suggesting that we don’t need our father? Besides, you’re only sixty-four.” He didn’t answer, and she didn’t press the issue. She hoped he would think on her words.

After a very good turkey dinner, she took him to the lounge where they played rummy—a game she’d almost forgotten because she hadn’t played it since she left home to go to college—and his concentration on it was as much of a present as she could have wanted.

She left her father at four o’clock and drove to Manhattan, returned the rental car and went home and dressed for work. She was scheduled to begin her shift at six-thirty. As she approached Allegory’s front door, she remembered that Warren would not be there that night. She was so disappointed at the thought of not seeing him that she sat in her dressing room taking deep breaths to calm her emotions for ten minutes before heading for the bar.

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