By the time we were finished, we were ready to tear down the sign in our yard and think again about remodeling.The next weekend, Melody and Lissa had ... huge opening at Nordstrom featuring their new line of summer fashions and maternity sportswear. It was fun to watch Lissa ‘work the dress’ with her six-month baby-bump. God! She is so beautiful. All the manufacturing and warehousing was being done off-site now, so Melody had doubled her design efforts and Lissa upped the promotion a level.. ’ ‘Why should I be?’ ‘Well almost everyone else is, but not Tom or Ella.’ ‘Are you afraid of your fatherAnnie?’ ‘Yes, and my mother.’ ‘Have they every hit you?’ ‘Not for years. But I feel dominated by them.’ ‘Well, that’s something I can teach you – it’s called self-assertion. The problem is if I teach you it too successfully they’ll want to hit you, finding nothing else works.’ ‘Is that a joke?’ ‘Well, almost. If you keep in contact with them while being coached by me the chance should come. Jonn was about to try to explain to the man that he didn’t need to worry about the money. But he stopped mid sentence when he turned to face the corner of the room. There sat on an arm chair with her oversized tee-shirt pulled down to cover her drawn up legs, was one of the prettiest little girls Jonn had ever seen.So this was the daughter. She couldn’t have been more than 13 years old. Her black gypsyish hair fell over her narrow smooth shoulders and framed a frightened sallow skinned young. Sometimes her clients were late themselves, or needed more time than Chelsea had scheduled for them. Things happened. But if she was supposed to meet with David at a certain time and was running late she had always managed to let him know, and usually well ahead of time. Though Lord knows she had often been tempted to simply show up late, without a word of explanation, just to see what would happen. But she just couldn’t.And now this. She’d had to go to the client’s office at the other end.