Page 22 of Every Rose

“But why am I so different from you and Jack? So driven?”

Daphne laughed. “I have a little theory about that.”

“Do tell.” Daphne loved new-age psychology and self-help books as much as Rose loved Italian clothes and French lingerie.

“A lot of kids try to live up to the expectations their parents have for them. In some families, those expectations are ridiculously high. In your case, you were living up to the expectations of a fantasy mother and father who, for as long as I can remember, were some kind of royalty.”

“You make me sound insane.”

“No. You were imaginative. You built an entire world view around all those outcast princess tales.”

“The Grimm people should be sued.”

“I used to worry about you being so hard on yourself.”

“Most parents want their kids to be successful.”

Again with that angelic smile. “We only ever wanted you to be happy. I can see your face now, so wrinkled with concentration you looked like an old woman reading books that were too advanced for you, working on Evan and Iris’s homework, thinking about college entrance exams when most girls were playing with dolls.“

She hadn’t realized Daphne was paying such close attention. It was impossible to explain the drive she’d felt to prove she was somehow smarter and better read than anyone else her age. “I wanted to be ready,” she said slowly, understanding her own drive for probably the first time. “I wanted to be ready, to prove that underneath the Cinderella rags—”

“Please, we never dressed you in rags.”

“Hand-me-downs. To me that felt like the same thing.”

Daphne put down her knife and fork. “We were so concerned with teaching you kids about sustainability and respecting the earth’s resources.”

“I know.” But a new dress now and then would have meant a lot. Her mom had a husband in hospital and enough problems. Besides, making her feel bad wouldn’t make any difference. There weren’t any kids at home any more, and oddly, she didn’t think any of the others had suffered from the lack of new clothes the way she had. So she was a shallow fashion victim. She gave a lot of money to good causes so she didn’t have to feel guilty every time she slipped into a little something with an Italian name on it.

“I swear, I was the only mother I knew who had to beg their child to study less.”

“I was pretty intense, wasn’t I?”

“You got accepted into Stanford Medical School beating out fierce competition from all over the world, so maybe you needed to be that intense.”

“Maybe.”

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