Cutler 01 - Dawn

City."
    "New York City!"
    "Yes. I want you to go there instead of returning to Emerson Peabody. I will make the arrangements today, and you can leave shortly. They have summer sessions, too.
    "Of course, it goes without saying that all this and all you have learned will remain here in this office. No one need know anything more than I decided you are too talented to waste your time cleaning rooms in a hotel."
    I could see she liked the idea that everyone would consider her as being magnanimous. She would look like a wonderful grandmother doing great things for her new granddaughter, and I would have to pretend to be grateful.
    But I didn't want to return to Emerson Peabody, and I did want to become a singer. She would get her way and rid herself of me, but I would have an opportunity I could only dream of before. New York City! A school for performing arts!
    And Daddy would be helped, too.
    "All right," I agreed. "As long as you do everything you promised to do."
    "I always live up to my word," she said angrily. "Your reputation, your name, your family's honor, are all important things. You come from a world where all those things were insignificant, but in my world—"
    "Honor and honesty were always important to us," I snapped back. "We might have been poor, but we were decent people. And Ormand and Sally Jean Longchamp didn't betray each other and lie to each other," I retorted. My eyes burned with tears of indignation.
    She gazed at me for a long moment again, only this time I thought I saw a look of approval in her eyes.
    "It will be interesting," she finally said, speaking slowly, "very interesting to see what kind of a woman Laura Sue's liaison spawned. I don't like your manners, but you have shown some independence and some spunk, and those are qualities I do admire."
    "I'm not sure, Grandmother," I replied, "if what you admire is ever going to be important to me."
    She pulled herself back as if I had splashed her with ice-cold water, her eyes turning distant and hard again instantly.
    "If that's all, I think you had better go. Thanks to you and your meddling, I have a lot to do. You'll be informed as to when you will be leaving," she added.
    I stood up slowly.
    "You think you can determine everyone's lives so easily, don't you?" I said bitterly, shaking my head.
    "I do what I have to do. Responsibility for significant things requires me to make hard' choices sometimes, but I do what is best for the family and the hotel. Someday, when you have something important to take care of and it requires you to make either unpleasant or unpopular choices, you will remember me and not judge me as harshly," she said, as if it were important to her that I have a better opinion of her.
    Then she smiled.
    "Believe me, when you need something or you get into trouble for one reason or another, you won't call on your mother or even my son. You'll call on me, and you will be happy that you can," she predicted.
    What arrogance, I thought, and yet it was true—even from my short stay here I could see that she was responsible for Cutler's Cove being what it was.
    I spun around quickly and walked out, unsure as to whether I had won or lost.
     
    Later that afternoon Randolph came to see me. It had become more and more difficult to think of him as my father now, and this just when I had begun to adjust to the idea. From the look on his face I could see that my grandmother had told him of her decision to send me to a school for performing arts.
    "Mother just told me about your decision to go to New York. How wonderful, although I must say, I will be sad to see you go off when you've really only just arrived," he complained. He did look somewhat upset by the idea, and I thought how sad it was that he didn't know the truth, that I as well as my mother and Grandmother Cutler kept him fooled. Was that fair? How fragile the happiness and peace was in this family, I thought. His devotion to my mother would surely dwindle to nothing if he knew she had been so unfaithful. In a sense everything was built on a lie, and I had to keep that lie alive.
    "I've always wanted to go to New York and be a singer," I said.
    "Of course you should go. I'm just teasing you. I'll miss you, but I'll come visit you often, and you'll be back for all the holidays. How exciting it's going to be for you. I've already told your mother, and she thinks it's a wonderful idea that you get formal training in the arts.
    "She wants to take you shopping for new clothes,