She still drew houses. All the time. She took every art class her high school offered. She took drafting. She took geometry and got an A. In her junior year, she won a regional contest for high school students, designing a small, affordable house for a single family. Her house had big
windows everywhere. And a little reading nook under the stairs.
“Forty-two windows,” she told me, grinning, when she showed me the plans. “Well, fourteen. It’s a small house. But you get the idea.”
She wanted to study architecture. There was a good program at a university about two hours away. She’d been talking about it since she was twelve.
It cost thirty-two thousand dollars a year.
I was proud of her. I was so proud of her I thought my heart would burst. And I was terrified, because I knew exactly how much money I had, and it was nowhere near thirty-two thousand dollars a year. It was nowhere near thirty-two thousand dollars total.
