What Dreams May Come by Kay Hooper

answer. She didn't want to lie, but even less did she want to tell him the entire truth. "I suppose ... I realized I had to learn to take care of myself." Which was, after all, true enough. "That I had to stop depending on others to make me feel worthwhile."
    His gaze lifted to her face, and his voice was grim when he said, "Worthwhile. How could you not feel worthwhile? Was it really that bad, Kelly? Did I and your family smother you that much?"
    She was relieved that he hadn't pressed her for more detail about her marriage, but the question he asked was nearly as difficult to answer. Shaking her head slightly, she said, "I don't blame you or my family. That was one of the things I had to face up to, that it was my own fault . . . not the fault of an old-fashioned family or an assertive fiancé. No, the flaw was in me, Mitch. Nobody told me I had to be the kind of woman my mother was—so totally devoted to her husband and children that nothing else was important to her, so wrapped up in them and their lives that she lost her own individuality."
    "I loved your mother," Mitch said, and the statement was both wistful and defensive.
    "So did I . She was easy to love. And she was happy with her life, I know that. She was a loving, gentle, motherly woman; that was her greateststrength. And her greatest weakness. She poured so much love into her family that when Keith died it was as if a part of her had been cut away. Twice as bad, because she thought of you as a second son. Her family was wounded, and she bled to death."
    Kelly drew a breath, and her voice was soft when she went on. "That was the kind of woman she was, the example I had in front of me all my life. It was natural for me to want to be like her, to consider the wishes of everyone I loved first and ignore my own. The problem was that Mom was the genuine article. I was just a pale copy. I didn't know what I wanted or needed, I never stopped to think about it. It never occurred to me that I had to learn to value myself before I could expect to be valued by others."
    "I valued you," Mitch said intensely.
    She'd had ten long years to think about it, and now her response was immediate and certain. "What you valued was my reflection of you, Mitch. And my willingness to be what you wanted. It couldn't have been anything else, because there was nothing else there."
    "Kelly—"
    "Think about it. You have to see it's true. I'm not saying you were conscious of your reasons. But love comes from need. What did you need from me?"
    "You tell me," he said a bit tightly. "You seem to have it all figured out."
    Ignoring the sarcasm, she said, "Your own family was anything but traditional. Your father was a domineering man, and your mother refused to be dominated by him. She wanted a career, friends apart from him, travel. And maybe it was unfortunate for all of you that she was just as strong-willed as your father. They fought right up until the day she left. Not six months later, you met Keith in high school, and his very traditional family adopted you in spirit."
    Mitch was staring at his hands again, silent, a little pale. Kelly knew how hard it had to be for him to hear this, but she had to make him understand that even the past hadn't been exactly as he remembered it.
    "We were so different from your own family. There were no bitter disputes in our house, no struggle for authority or confusion about what we were supposed to be. My parents had been together since they were sixteen years old; they'd decided on the roles a long time before. There was Keith, so secure in his world, loved and supported."
    "And you," Mitch said in a low voice.
    She nodded. "And me. I was just a kid, Keith's little sister. It was years before you really noticed me, and by then I adored you. I would have done anything to please you, even go on pretending I could be the kind of woman my mother was. That's what you saw in me, that willingness to be whatever you wanted me to be. Unlike your father, I