Her eyes gazed upward to the clouds for an answer. "To save Gracie?"

"From what, exactly?" Angela's tone was smooth and calm, but direct.

There were a thousand things she had once thought Gracie couldn't do for herself. Now Quinlan asked herself the same question. She had yet to come up with an answer. Her eyes fell to her lap.

"Okay," Angela began. "Let's look at what you've written." She scanned back over the list, causing Quinlan to squirm. "I see several items here that were addressed in the synopsis on the computer."

"Really?" Quinlan asked, genuinely surprised. "I didn't...I guess I didn't...read that far."

"And these other...comments," Angela continued. "Is that what you call them?"

Quinlan cleared her throat. "Yes."

"The centerpiece, Grace's hair...." Angela moved to the bottom of the list. "A Thanksgiving meal?"

"She needs to start planning now." Her voice gained momentum. "She's as slow as mola.s.ses and, well, it just won't get done...." Quinlan's voice drifted off.

"Let's put the list away." Angela closed the notebook and pa.s.sed it back to Quinlan. "Now. Remember the painful memories you tapped into the other night?"

Her brows came together. "How did you know that?"

Angela ignored Quinlan's question. "Remember what came up for you? Concentrate."

She didn't need to concentrate. The memory still burned inside of her. It wouldn't go away and served no purpose except to bring up the pain she buried a long time ago. "I don't want to talk about it."

"Tell me what you've learned," Angela's voice gentle.

Quinlan sat for long seconds, thinking how much she hated those words. Her throat tightened. Tears threatened. "Do we have to do this now?"

Angela reached across and covered Quinlan's hand with hers. "I think it's time." Her smile was rea.s.suring. "Go ahead."

She took a slow deep breath. "I just wanted to make things easy for her."

"And how'd that work for you?" Angela asked.

"I thought, well," Quinlan said. "Until...."

"Until when?"

"Now." Quinlan's lower lip trembled. "Nothing I've tried works. She won't listen to me. I don't know what else I can do." She pulled out fresh Kleenex and blew her nose. "You know what I've been going through. Why does it hurt so much?"

Angela sat back and folded her hands in her lap.

"They tricked me." Quinlan huffed a few times and then sat up straight, her face reddened, nostrils flaring. "That's what they did."

"Who?" Angela asked.

"The Advisory Council." Her voice cracked. "That's why they let me come back. They knew I'd fail." Even in her highly agitated state Quinlan controlled the flaring nostrils. She still had some dignity, if only a thread.

Angela ran a hand through wavy blonde curls.

"What do you want from me?" Quinlan glared at Angela. "What do they want?"

Angela sighed deeply and shook her head ever so slightly. "Oh my." She leaned forward, resting her forearms on the table. "Quinlan," she said. "All your life, what did you want to do more than anything else?"

Crossing her arms Quinlan leaned back and studied the near perfect Cover Girl. A long moment pa.s.sed. "Be a teacher."

"That's right." Angela said. "Now, tell me." She used her index finger for emphasis. "What do teachers do?"

She raised her eyebrows to a duh height, wondering what heavy drug Angela had mixed with her morning coffee. "Teach."

"And, do teachers do things for their students, or do they teach them how to do things themselves?"

Where's she going with this? Quinlan wondered.

"A teacher prepares a student to think, evaluate, take risks, fall down, re-evaluate, and learn. And then...move forward." Angela paused. "Parents are teachers too."

The impact of Angela's words seeped to the depths of her soul. Her eyes rounded and filled with tears. She dropped her head in her hands, sobs erupting from the pit of her stomach. "I failed at that too."

Angela placed an arm around Quinlan's shoulder. "It's not about failing. You did the best you could," she said. "You held on to a lot of pain during your life."

"I have nothing to offer-my whole life has been a failure," Quinlan choked out, blinded by new shards stabbing old pain.

"Listen to me. The greatest gift a mother bird gives her babies is to teach them to fly," Angela said. "She pushes them out of the nest." Angela hugged Quinlan tighter. "She doesn't clip their wings."

Quinlan fumbled for fresh Kleenex.

"You held on so tight, not for her...but for you," Angela said. "She eased your pain."

Quinlan felt like a lump. A frumpy lump, huddled next to Angela. "What do I do now?"

"You free her. Say goodbye to the physical need you have to keep her close; time to push her out of the nest, let her fly."

"She really doesn't need me?" Quinlan felt like an empty box, the kind that once held large appliances.

"Of course she needs you," Angela said, "but not in the physical sense to do things she can do for herself."

"Then what? What can I possibly give her?" The tears ebbed, but the nose still dripped like a leaky faucet.

"What she needs, what anyone needs, is love-the unconditional kind; support, encouragement. Be her cheerleader." Angela held out her fist. "Rah, rah, rah." She stood. "It's not too late. Your intent was always in the right place." She placed a hand on Quinlan's shoulder. "When you're up to it, go back to the blue computer" she said. "Take your time and be more thorough. Look for the bigger picture." She then walked away, leaving Quinlan alone with her thoughts.

Quinlan remained seated for a long time, her mind reverberating Angela's words, "It's not too late." Her world revolved so tightly around what she didn't want for Gracie she failed to recognize the helplessness she had created in her own daughter. Somewhere deep inside she must have known Gracie's low sense of self stemmed from her own need to control. Over the years, even Tom had allowed her to have reign over his life. He hadn't necessarily agreed with her demands...what were the words he used to say? The path of least resistance.

She spent several hours at the library thoroughly reading the synopsis on the blue computer. She returned to her living quarters, overwhelmed by what she had learned.

Gracie thought Adam was having an affair. Turns out he had been sent to Beijing for six months, leaving Gracie in charge. Her Gracie. The daughter she had convinced herself couldn't survive a day on her own. And here she is making adult decisions, running a household, going to school, and even volunteering.

Gracie's summer volunteer a.s.signment introduced her to Cherry, a young deaf child. Her ability to interact with the little girl had even resulted in an award for her efforts. Now she volunteered in the girl's cla.s.s once a week. Quinlan had to smile, remembering her own days as an attendance clerk and the students who worked for her.

Hannah's girlfriend/boyfriend thing seemed pretty harmless at this point. And as expected, she didn't find any answers to help rearrange the centerpiece or whether Gracie had even thought about Thanksgiving.

She lay on her bed fully clothed. Surely this had been the longest day in her recorded history. Her eyes closed. What have I learned? She drifted off.

She looked around. She sat in a lone straight back chair on the floor of a large gallery, the entire Advisory Council before her.

"So tell the Council, if you please, what you have learned." The address came from a woman standing before her.

A prosecutor? What is this? A trial? Just as she opened her mouth to speak she felt a warmth in the middle of her chest, unlike the achy coldness she held for most of her Kathryn life. It spread around her like a heated cloak. She straightened in her chair and pushed her shoulders back. A sense of peace moved through her.

"What I have learned is...."

Quinlan opened her eyes and sat up. Morning sunlight filtered through the sole window in her living quarters. She stiffly got to her feet and winced at the wrinkled clothes she had slept in.

She quickly bathed and changed into a fresh outfit. Grabbing her ID bracelet and another wad of Kleenex she stared at the blue media device.

"Worthless, that's what you are." She headed to the door, paused, and wheeled around. "Oh, what the heck." She pushed the ear buds into place and dropped the device in her pocket.

"It's quite a handy gadget if used correctly," came a man's smooth, deep voice through the earpieces.

Quinlan hadn't realized she'd turned the dang thing back on. She found the on/off switch and stopped. It was off.

"May I ask who this is?" she asked.

"You may."

Quinlan waited. Silence. "Well?"

"I'm waiting for you to ask," the voice said.

Something had shifted in Quinlan during the night. Her impatience, irritability and sense of urgency had been squelched. Was it a dream? Even the man's voice booming uninvited through her earpieces didn't rattle her. Quinlan smiled and cleared her throat.

"With whom am I speaking?" she calmly asked.

"George, madam."

Quinlan's eyes rounded. Advisory Council George? she thought, unsure what to say. Fortunately, he supplied the next line.

"You've gone through a much-needed transformation during the night," he said. "Pay heed. To understand your heart...to give back, you must learn to be a good listener."

George's words penetrated the air around her. Be a good listener. Doesn't sound too hard. "Okay, I can do that. Thank you."

"You put her through a trial?" Mary asked. "Seems a bit drastic even for you, I must say."

George smiled his knowing smile. "Yes. And I think it worked well."

"I hope you're right."

There was no reply from George, only the occasional tapping of his cane as he left Mary's office.

CHAPTER 42.

QUINLAN.

Quinlan stood on the sidewalk outside her living quarters and fished in her pocket for her iPod. She flipped the switch, scrolled to direct access and immediately found herself on an oversized towel on the west beach of Galveston Island. Gracie sat next to her. The air smelled salty and felt unusually warm for late October. Quinlan took a deep breath. It had been a long time since she'd smelled the ocean. Sea gulls swooped and laughed overhead as lazy puffs of white clouds rolled across the bluer-than- usual sky. The waves sang their melodious white noise which soothed the mind and calmed the heart. But, Gracie in Galveston? Alone?

Grace hugged her knees and stared out across the water.

"The tide's coming in, Gracie. You'll need to move the towel back." Quinlan eyed the foamy curls edging toward them.

"What did you used to tell me?"

"Huh?" Quinlan forgot about the tide.

Grace panned the sky above her. "The sky is bluer in October than any other month of the year. Was that it?"

Quinlan stared at her daughter. Is she talking to me? She hesitated only briefly before responding. "It's November."

"Maybe, November," Grace said. "I never even thought to ask where you learned that."

She studied the water in front of her. "My sixth grade teacher."

"You'd remind me every fall to notice how blue the sky was."

"I did, didn't I?"

Grace sighed deeply. "You know, I never figured out the Easter thing," she said. "Well, except for the baskets you made for the kids. I got that part."