NEWSPAPER REPORTER AND
HEROINE OF CHASING THE LEGACY
**While others were celebrating Mother's Day, Layla finally gathered the courage to push open the door to the bedroom she had occupied as a child. This day dedicated to celebrating mothers always brought painful memories for her anyway. She figured nothing could make it worse.
As she stepped over the threshold, fifteen years dropped away. Nothing had been touched. As if Pop had been waiting for her to come home.
Her fingers trembled as she trailed them along the curved front of the off-white dresser Pop had made for her tenth birthday. Grown-up furniture now that she was a young lady, he had said gruffly.
The fading photo of a mother she never knew still sat beside a stuffed cat, its velvet ears rubbed smooth where the tiny fingers of her little girl self clutched the toy every night at bedtime.
A toy she once fancied saving for her own children. A sob caught in her throat. The foolish dreams of a foolish girl. Just as foolish as pouring out her heart to Miss Stella and pretending she was the mother Layla had never known.
She turned away, facing the evidence of her confused and rebellious teenaged years. A frilly pink canopy bed pushed against a wall painted fire-engine red. A shelf of classic books and movies beside a life-sized poster of singer Madonna in her infamous cone-
bra costume.
Trying to rebel herself out of nerdiness, Layla used the singer's costumes as a model for her teenaged wardrobe of body revealing clothing. Short, tight skirts over fishnet stockings with see-through blouses.
And flashy shoes.
Layla now wore casual jeans and tops, though her love of flashy shoes remained. She admired the gold stitching swirling across the toes of her red suede ballerina flats, and allowed a wistful smile.
Did she think she could make her wishes come true by clicking her heels together as Dorothy did in the Wizard of Oz?
There's no place like home, Dorothy had said. Well, she was home again. Layla wondered if that was a good thing or a bad thing.
**Excerpt from CHASING THE LEGACY, copyright Genene Valleau writing as Genie Gabriel
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