Gwen's Self Doubt

This is post 39 of Section III. To begin at the beginning, go here. Section II begins here. Section III begins here.

Besides, there was the other point of tension. He cleared his throat. “Uh—Gwen, I’m sorry about Lizzy. You know I am.”
She held up a hand. “No, Ed. I’m the one who should be sorry. You were right about them. Maybe you didn’t go about it in the best way, but your ideas were sound. You know, about responsibility and all that.”
Bennett sat up a little straighter. Sound. It was a good, chest-thumping word. But what had brought about this correction in Gwen’s understanding? “Did she straighten up when I left?” he inquired.
Gwen tossed her head impatiently. “Hardly. I’ll tell you about it in a minute, but first let me ask you, was I a bad mother?”
Bennett had sufficient husbandly experience to answer without thinking. “Of course not. You were a wonderful mother. Believe me, anyone who can sit through two hours a day of beginning clarinet practice is a veritable saint. You couldn’t have done more for those kids.”
Gwen felt a little better. She certainly couldn’t say the same about Bennett’s level of involvement. But blame was beside the point now. She shook her head doubtfully. “We must have done something, or not done it. Do you know, I went up to read Lizzy a bedtime story, after she’d calmed down a bit, and she actually didn’t know any—or claimed not to? So I got out our old Grimm’s fairy tales that we used to read to Chloe, and I started reading ‘Hansel and Gretel.’ When I got to the part where Hansel drops the little stones, she interrupted and said it was boring to listen to, and she had it in video and in hypertext on CD-Rom.”
Bennett rolled his eyes in the darkness.

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