And before that week ended, she would kneel in her daughter’s nursery, move a stack of baby blankets aside, and find the first proof that Colleen had not gone into motherhood blindly at all.
She had gone into it preparing for war.
Part 2
Dorothy waited until evening to enter the nursery closet.
All day she behaved exactly as a grieving mother-in-law was expected to behave. She warmed bottles, changed diapers, thanked nurses, and pretended not to notice that Grant disappeared to take private phone calls in the garden. She pretended not to see the subtle rearranging already underway in the house: Colleen’s framed bridal portrait removed from the hallway table, a drawer in the kitchen emptied of her stationery, fresh flowers in a vase that had never once held flowers when Colleen was alive because, as Colleen used to say, “I like my beauty attached to roots.”
At eight-thirty, Grant announced he had to meet the funeral director about thank-you notes and insurance paperwork.
Dorothy asked no questions.
The moment his car left the driveway, she went upstairs.