The Nightmare Daze

3. In the Night

Florence

It is truly painful to look into the face of disappointment. I try to convince myself that I don't care, that I've hardened my heart to that constant feeling of letting him down, but the expression on my father's face cuts deep between my ribs.

"I just don't know what to do."

Sometimes, it's like he's talking to my mother, as if he's asking her for advice. Where did he go wrong? How can he save me now? But he's looking into my eyes instead of hers, and I am the one that shoulders his weariness now. I make him tired.

"I don't know," I whisper. I was prepared to fight after my poor behavior at the ball, but by the time the party had dispersed he was too tired from being cold toward me that we didn't speak, and now several days later it's as if the silence between us has continued to drain him. Still, I can't bring myself to apologize to him. All of the hurt won't erase my own anger and disappointment.

"You don't even try to get to know them before you've decided you don't like them. You are beginning to acquire a reputation." His tone isn't biting, but the words hurt anyway.

"As what," I ask, "A shrew?"

"I am not at fault for how others think of you."

"And neither am I!"

"Yes, Florence," his voice is a sigh, and he doesn't look at me as he runs a hand over his face. "Yes, you are."

"I am either chattel or a shrew, and nothing in between."

"It is your decision to think of it that way. You are responsible for how you view the situation."

And he's right, in a way. But why should I have to make the best of it? "I resent that."

"What would you have me do?" His question is a continual echo through our conversation. There is no answer I can give that will satisfy him. "I've given you time, I've given you your choice of good men. You know that I'm being more generous than anyone else in my position. But you have a responsibility—"

"An obligation."

"Call it what you like." Here, his voice takes an edge, and he finally looks at me. His face is guarded, as if he's talking to a stranger, and I realize that perhaps to him that's what I've become. "Your mother and I were barely acquaintances when we married, but we both understood our responsibility to our station and our families. Do you think it was easy?"

"But you both wanted to be married."

"We both had romantic notions about what marriage should be, and that wasn't it. But we made it work because we wanted it to work. Love only grows if you let it."

"But you wanted it!"

"Do you not want to be married?" My father takes my hand in his, and for a moment I'm swayed by the familiar touch. His presence used to comfort me when life was scary, and now he is that part of my life that scares me.

"I don't know," I admit, and my stomach is tied in knots. It is a rebellion against everything I've grown up believing. Love and marriage are what my friends have aspired to for as long as I can remember. And all that time I've never confessed what I truly thought—how wonderful it would be to simply exist for myself—because I know how foolish, how selfish, that sounds.

"What would you have me do then?" The question again.

"Let me choose my own way."

"What will that be? I can give you your freedom but that doesn't mean the world will follow suit."