Rose
New York City, 1912
“Darling, maybe you could wear a veil. Not in white or black of course. I’m sure we could find you one in a nice pastel shade.”
My mother’s voice is pitched low in an attempt to appear mild mannered. It’s a poor attempt. One that makes my scarred skin itch.
“Lorna Winters has her daughter in shades of lemon and lime this season,” she adds quickly.
“Veil or no veil, everyone knows what lies beneath, mother.”
No man is going to want to look at my face let alone marry me. Barely a year ago the factory I was working in caught fire. All the employees were locked inside when it happened. A barbaric measure meant to maximize the foreman’s profit by keeping us at our stations throughout the duration of our shift.
No bathroom breaks. No chance of escape.
I survived the fire and the guilt that came after. The guilt that I made it out when so many others didn’t. And what have Idone with my second chance at life? I’ve become a shadow of my former self.
My former friends don’t talk to me. Strangers point and whisper. Even my own mother is ashamed to be seen with me.
“It’s just so shocking,” my mother murmurs as the cook serves our dinner.
We eat in silence, a tense stalemate that will have no winner. No piece of cloth is going to change the past or society’s scathing opinion of anyone marred. Before the fire I would’ve made a good match and married well. Now I’m set to become the hermit spinster my mother always feared my cousin would become.
My mother’s remarried. Her husband is a wealthy banker who is never home for dinner. Samantha, my mother’s cook and the last of her original staff, says he prefers to dine at the brothel on Wilson Street. Considering how little I see of the man I suspect he does far more than dine with the women there. My mother will ignore his indiscretions so long as he continues to provide her with the lavish lifestyle she’s accustomed to.
She thought she would climb the social ladder through mine or my cousin’s marriage. She was mistaken. Anna-Marie escaped her clutches by signing up to marry a Texas Ranger as a mail order bride. My fate was inevitable until the fire.
Now, I’m cursed. No man wants a scarred wife. Let alone a man of good standing in society.
My mother is desperate to unload her spinster daughter. She doesn’t need me anymore. She has the status she’s always craved and I’m just an unwelcome hinderance.
The maid delivers the day’s mail after dinner. Mostly invitations to highly anticipated balls and weddings. All addressed to my mother, my name conveniently left off.
A faded and stained envelope catches my attention. It isn’t an invitation. It’s a letter. My mother’s dark eyebrows rise high on her forehead, and she whips the envelope at me with a curt look.
“Your cousin has written you. Make sure to inform her that she’s no longer welcome in this house. I raised that girl for years and this is how she repays me…”
I stop listening to my mother’s melodramatic wallowing. She holds grudges like no other.
Anna-Marie’s neat script fills the pages. I wrote to her after the fire. Depressed and lonely with a mother who couldn’t muster an ounce of sympathy, I poured my very soul into the letter I sent to Texas.
Even a month old, her response is everything my mother’s wasn’t. It’s warm, and empathetic. She asks after my health. If the pain lingers or if I have nightmares. Every word of my cousin’s letter reminds me what it feels like to be loved by family. To be accepted, scars and all.
The last few lines of her letter make my breath catch. I nearly believe them to be a willful hallucination.
Come to Texas. The people here are different, and no one will think you less beautiful simply because of a scar. Survivors are valued here. You can stay with us as long as you like, and if you’d be willing to consider a match, I know of a man, a good man, in need of a wife.
My heart pounds in my chest, the rapid beating making me breathless as I read the words again and again.
Grady McKinnon owns a general store, and he would make any woman a fine husband. Henry says if you don’t like him, there are a hundred men within a day’s ride who would trip over their boots to meet you.
I let out a very unladylike snort that makes my mother glare at me. For the first time in a year, the sharp reprimand doesn’t stir an ounce of shame.
“Well,” she says with a haughty raised brow.
I don’t look into her eyes when I speak. I look over her shoulder to Samantha, the woman who has worked in mymother’s house my entire life. Who fed me when all my mother wanted for dinner was a tall glass of sherry. Who changed the dressing on my scars every day, carefully following the doctor’s strict instructions. Who has weathered my mother’s ill temperaments and both our first fall from grace and my great tragedy, as my mother calls it.
“I’m going to Texas,” I tell her. Her blue eyes brim with tears as I rush to add before a joyful mix of sorrow overcomes me, “There is a man who wants to marry me.”
