For Claudia, she needed to wear more dresses and learn to cook so she could be the perfect wife and not be hardheaded like her mother. No man wanted a woman who spent all her time with her nose in a book. That was only acceptable if it was a cookbook. Reading and college were a waste of time in Dale Forrest’s handbook on life.
Both Richard and Claudia had defied him, paid the price, and did what their souls called for them to do. They would still be dealing with him if his harsh ways and crappy diet hadn’t cut their suffering at his hands short. When Richard was a junior in college, their father had a massive heart attack and died almost instantly. While both siblings mourned the loss of a parent, neither could say they missed him as a person. It was a sad and bitter truth neither felt th
