Waiting

This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design. In middle age, Anne Stephens looks back on the childhood passions that shaped her: a quiet, creative father, a fierce and demanding mother, a home shadowed by grief, and an early hunger for beauty, meaning, and love. Those memories lead her to Robert Duffy, a brilliant young scholar she chooses with urgent hope, determined to make marriage and motherhood the creative work that will give her life purpose. Yet the domestic world she builds is never simple. Robert feels the strain of compromise and confinement, while Anne's fierce devotion to her children gradually hardens into possessiveness, especially toward her daughter Margaret. When Margaret returns from camp and secretly intercepts letters, Anne's suspicion ignites a family crisis. The truth is not a childish romance but Margaret's wish to study dancing professionally, a dream that Robert is willing to respect. Their conflict forces Anne to confront the cost of control, the sacrifices hidden inside marriage, and the difference between shaping a life and allowing one to grow. In a painful reckoning, Anne learns that love must make room for independence. The result is a moving portrait of motherhood, identity, and the hard, necessary work of letting go.