The Choice - Nicholas Sparks [13]
She stopped smiling when she caught sight of Molly sleeping in the corner. A quick peek was enough to remind her that the end result hadn’t changed and that maybe, just maybe, she could have done a better job of convincing him that it was his duty to help her. As she replayed the evening, she felt a wave of embarrassment. She knew she’d been rambling, but after being knocked down, she had lost her focus, and then her frustration had rendered her completely unable to stop talking. Her mother would have had a field day with that one. She loved her mother, but her mother was one of those ladies who never lost control. It drove Gabby crazy; more than once during her teenage years, she’d wanted to take her mother by the arms and shake her, just to elicit a spontaneous response. Of course, it wouldn’t have worked. Her mother would have simply allowed the shaking to continue until Gabby was finished, then smoothed her hair and made some infuriating comment like “Well, Gabrielle, now that you’ve gotten that out of your system, can we discuss this like ladies?”
Ladies. Gabby couldn’t stand that word. When her mother said it, she was often plagued by a sweeping sense of failure, one that made her think she had a long way to go and no map to get there.
Of course, her mother couldn’t help the way she was, any more than Gabby could. Her mother was a walking cliché of southern womanhood, having grown up wearing frilly dresses and being presented to the community’s elite at the Savannah Christmas Cotillion, one of the most exclusive debutante balls in the country. She had also served as treasurer for the Tri Delts at the University of Georgia, another family tradition, and while in college, she had apparently been of the opinion that academics were far less important than working toward a “Mrs.” degree, which she believed the only career choice for a proper southern lady. It went without saying that she wanted the “Mr.” part of the equation to be worthy of the family name. Which essentially meant rich.
Enter her father. Her dad, a successful real estate developer and general contractor, was twelve years older than his wife when they’d married, and if not as rich as some, he was certainly well-off. Still, Gabby could remember studying the wedding photos of her parents as they stood outside the church and wondering how two such different people could have ever fallen in love. While her mom loved the pheasant at the country club, Dad preferred biscuits and gravy at the local diner; while Mom never walked as far as the mailbox without her makeup, Dad wore jeans, and his hair was always a bit disheveled. But love each other they did—of this, Gabby had no doubt. In the mornings, she would sometimes catch her parents in a tender embrace, and never once had she heard them argue. Nor did they have separate beds, like so many of Gabby’s friends’ parents, who often struck her as business partners more than lovers. Even now, when she visited, she would find her parents snuggled up on the couch together, and when her friends marveled, she would simply shake her head and admit that for whatever reason, they were perfectly suited to each other.
Much to her mother’s endless disappointment, Gabby, unlike her three honey blond sisters, had always been more like her father. Even as a child, she preferred overalls to dresses, adored climbing in trees, and spent hours playing in the dirt. Every now and then, she would traipse behind her father at a job site, mimicking his movements as he checked the seals on newly installed windows or peeked into boxes that had recently arrived from Mitchell’s hardware store. Her dad taught her to bait a hook and to fish, and she loved riding beside him in his old, rumbly truck