Waltz of Her Life

Through it all, Hayley somehow kept a slender, model quality figure and her height topped out at five feet eight inches, four inches taller than her mother. Much of her height was in her lovely, graceful legs. Where had she gotten those from? Every summer, when Hayley would prance about the house and yard in her short-shorts, Linda would wail "Why couldn't I have had legs like that?"

When the time came for Hayley to learn how to drive, both Linda and Stephen taught her, in many white-knuckle and anxiety ridden sessions in the mall parking lot on a late Sunday afternoon or at the high school on the weekends. She received her license at sixteen, the same as any other youth, and Linda braced for her daughter's order for a car of her own. Incredibly, though, the order never came. Hayley was content to borrow the Jeep if she wanted to go someplace with a group of her friends. "Why would I need a car?" she said, one night over the dinner table. "So it can break down and I throw away all kinds of money fixing it? Money that could go to programs and upgrades, not to mention minutes? Besides, that's what boyfriends are for."

Ah, yet another area in which Linda worried. In her last two years of high school, a parade of boys came calling for beautiful, blond Hayley. Linda and Stephen met them all.

They'd laid all those ground rules the year she turned fifteen. Once, a guy named Terry came by for Hayley in a black Mustang convertible that reminded Linda of a studded-out version of the car Lauren drove when they were in college. When he came in the house to meet her and Stephen, she realized that he wasn't a boy at all, that he'd been on his own for several years and worked in construction and landscaping. He charmed Stephen by carrying on a spirited conversation with him about the fortunes of the Cincinnati Bengals.

Before she let Hayley out of the house to go on a date with a guy who was clearly well into his twenties, she took her aside to get more information. "Where did you meet him?"

"Relax, mom. He's Stephanie's older brother."

"Does he know how old you are?"

"Well, duh, mom. He knows Stephanie and I are in the same grade."

A vivid memory of leather jacketed Seth occurred to her. "Eleven-thirty," Linda said, pointing a finger at Hayley for emphasis. "If this young man doesn't have you back here by eleven-thirty, I'm going to tell the police he kidnapped you."