Rules of the Road

While Jenna relaxes in Mrs. Gladstone’s house, she daydreams about what life would have been like if Harry was her father. “I saw him taking me out in the backyard when I was small and teaching me all about shoes” (133). A letter has come from her mother, and as she reads it a wave of anxiety washes over her. The letter starts with chatty updates about work, then her mother shares that they had to change their home phone number because her father started calling late at night, drunk. She is writing to give Jenna the new unlisted phone number and to let her know they are okay. Despite the reassurances from her mother, Jenna panics. Memories of her drunk father forcing her to answer the phone and lie for him when she was very young bubble to the surface. Jenna calls her mother at work and asks if she should come home, but her mother reassures her again that they are fine. After Jenna hangs up, she thinks again about her father and the advice Harry Bender gave her. This time her imagined younger self refuses to pick up the phone for her drunk father. “Not this time, Daddy” (137). The following day, to cheer her up, Alice gives Jenna a makeover. Despite protests from Jenna, Alice cuts her hair with stylish bangs and takes Jenna out for a fun day of clothes shopping.

Jenna is thrilled with the new stylish outfits Alice finds for her, and they bond over an enjoyable day shopping together. For the first time Jenna feels as beautiful as Faith. Mrs. Gladstone tells Jenna to go and enjoy the rest of the day off, but Jenna, unable to stop thinking about their mission to save the company, goes to the library to research Ken Woldman. What she finds surprises her. Although Ken clearly cares about making money, he also fundamentally seems like a good guy. He comes from a poor family and started off his meteoric career doing newspaper rounds and lawn-mowing jobs. Jenna, who also had a paper route, respects him more after reading his history.

Back at the Dallas Gladstone’s store Jenna asks Harry whether she can shadow him to pick up sales pointers. She is impressed with the personal attention he shows to each customer and makes mental notes so she can improve her own (already stellar) salesmanship. To top off an already great day, on the way back to the parking garage a handsome young man asks Jenna to dance when she stops to watch a band playing in the mall. Flustered, she stammers that she can’t dance. Undeterred, the young man introduces himself and takes her hand, and before she knows it, she is dancing. After two dances he tells her “it had been a pleasure to dance with such a pretty young woman” (149), which leaves Jenna glowing. She looks at herself in the store window, and for the first time truly thinks she is “a pretty young woman” (149).

With only nine days left before the meeting, Mrs. Gladstone and her team call all the stockholders asking for their support. They are falling behind and losing hope, but Harry confidently tells them he has one more trick up his sleeve. He shares that he has set up a meeting that evening with someone who might be able to swing it for them. Before he leaves for the meeting Jenna talks to Harry again about her father and tells him she is not sure how to handle things. Jenna tells him, “‘It’s like I lose if he’s here and lose if he’s gone’” (151). Harry cuts in and asks Jenna whether she has told her dad the way she feels, and when she says he wouldn’t understand Harry replies, “‘Maybe saying it isn't as much for him as it is for you’” (152). Jenna happily daydreams about Harry after he leaves for his secret meeting. She pictures him saving the company and telling her that “he always wanted a daughter like [her] and that if [she] didn't mind he'd be so proud to be [her] surrogate father” (153). Later that evening Mrs. Gladstone sits down with Jenna and gives her an envelope and thanks her for everything she has done over the last few weeks. Jenna opens it to find 50 shares of Gladstone stock, which are worth over $1000 and makes Jenna an official stockholder.

At 2:13 a.m. their worlds are shattered when they are woken to the news that a drunk driver killed Harry Bender that night in a head-on collision with his car.

Harry Bender is laid to rest at the Last Roundup Cemetery. His headstone reads “HERE LIES HARRY BENDER—HE GAVE IT HIS BEST SHOD” (159), which is a nod to his career in the shoe business. At the funeral home before the burial, Jenna sees how many peoples’ lives were touched by Harry and how many people love him. She surprises herself at how much she loves him considering she only met him a few days ago. When Jenna looks into the casket, she cannot hold back her emotions. She cries for all the unfairness, loss, and pain affecting so many people she loves: her grandmother’s loss of her old self to Alzheimer’s, her father’s loss of himself to drink, her and Faith’s loss of the father they’d hoped for, and for her mother who struggles to hold everything together for her daughters. Finally, Jenna cries for all the times she felt guilty because she couldn't stop her father drinking. Jenna knows it isn't her fault, but “the rawness of it, the feelings that [she] should have been able to help him, but couldn't, burst from [her] with such a stinging, ringing clearness” (158) and overwhelm her. 

The emotion drains all of Jenna’s energy. She holds onto Mrs. Gladstone’s hand as they stand at Harry’s graveside in the Texas heat and listen to person after person tell their personal, sometimes uplifting, sometimes funny stories about Harry. Murry Castlebaum, who flew over from Chicago, encourages Jenna to say something too. Jenna doesn’t feel as though she can, but when she sees Elden staring at her and not looking the least bit sad, she gets up and walks to the podium. Jenna starts off saying that although she had only known Harry for a week, she “loved him like he was my father” (162). Without taking her eyes off Elden, Jenna follows up with a moving speech about Harry’s kind and truthful nature and how he had taught her “not to be afraid of the darkness” (162), which is in refence to both the darkness of her father’s addiction and the darkness in Elden.

On the day before the stockholder’s meeting Jenna and Mrs. Gladstone have a heated conversation about Harry. Neither Jenna nor Mrs. Gladstone know who Harry was going to meet on the day he died. Mrs. Gladstone is angry at the world for taking him too soon and has lost her energy and motivation to fight for her company. She snaps at Jenna, who is trying to comfort her, but after accepting a grilled cheese sandwich and a pep talk from Jenna Mrs. Gladstone gets the fire back in her eyes and is ready to start the fight again. Jenna explains to Mrs. Gladstone that Harry helped her understand that speaking the truth is the only answer. Harry helped Jenna realize that she lets people walk all over her for fear of upsetting them and knows she must tell her father how she really feels. She also tells Mrs. Gladstone that she must go to the meeting and “‘kick some butt, ma’am’” (168).