Total pages in book: 141
Estimated words: 134531 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 673(@200wpm)___ 538(@250wpm)___ 448(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 134531 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 673(@200wpm)___ 538(@250wpm)___ 448(@300wpm)
She wasn’t a child anymore. She was observant enough to see things that she’d been blind to before.
She was almost fifteen. She was growing into a lovely young woman already, not showing signs of that awkward transition between childhood and becoming a young adult. No gangly limbs or acne. Her midnight hair billowed down her back, her nose was high and delicate, lips full and faintly pink. Her eyes were blue but not like mine. They were almost lavender. They had been since she was born.
I feared that beauty. What it might invite. What kind of boys it might attract. The ones with the square jaws and good families like her father. The ones with monsters beneath all of those masculine lines and good breeding.
But she was not timid and naïve like her mother. No, she already knew her own mind. She was obsessed with philosophy, feminism, civil rights. She was almost a fully formed adult.
She already challenged her father on some of his more misogynistic ideals—all of them—and I’d had my fists clenched under the table as she did so, taut, ready to jump between them if need be.
But Preston had never shown an inch of irritation that his daughter believed in women’s rights when he so obviously didn’t. He was charmed by her independent spirit.
Except the night at the dinner table when his guest had complimented my cooking and complimented Preston on finding a woman who ‘knew her place.’
Me, I’d smiled tightly and looked down at my plate with a meekness Preston expected.
My daughter did no such thing. “A woman who knows her place is a woman who knows her voice,” she offered sweetly. “A woman who knows her place is a woman who knows it’s wherever a man says it’s not. I think we’re all liberated enough to understand that men who try to confine women to certain roles and rooms within the household are terrified of the power women will have if they are allowed to reach their full potential.” She reached over to take a dainty sip of her iced tea. Not rushing, no... Taking her time as everyone at the table watched her. It was a power move most adults wouldn’t be able to pull off.
She put her tea down. “And most of those men are deeply insecure and inferior to women in every way,” she finished, smiling sweetly.
The short but loaded silence after she spoke was a cacophony in my ears. That was until Preston plastered on a fake smile and made some joke. He forced the conversation forward, but the mood in the room definitely shifted.
I’d moved food around on my plate, my hand shaking. Violet had eaten without a care in the world, wearing a self-satisfied smirk.
By the end of the meal, it became clear that the business associate was sufficiently shamed by a teenage girl, therefore, he wasn’t likely to ever deal with Preston again. Despite his attempts to get him to stay for a cigar and a drink, the man left.
And Preston turned on Violet the second the front door closed.
“Do you have any idea how important that man was?” he asked in a low tone, walking into the dining room where Violet was eating her chocolate cake without a care in the world.
I was sitting beside her pretending to drink tea with a slice of my own in front of me. I wouldn’t eat it, obviously. But I didn’t want to imprint any unhealthy eating habits on my daughter, so I would always pretend to eat dessert.
Violet looked up at her father and rolled her eyes. “Do you have any idea how much of a gross misogynist he was?” she countered.
Preston stared at her. “It is not your place to try and challenge grown men at the dinner table,” he told her with an edge to his voice.
An edge that my daughter did not recognize. Because she did not have to recognize it.
I did.
“What? I’m supposed to be seen and not heard?” she asked sweetly. “Come on, Daddy. As much as you’ve got that in Mom, you’re not going to get it in me.”
The barb wasn’t intended to hit me, but it drew blood nonetheless. I hated that my daughter saw me that way, wished for things to be different, for me to give my little girl a strong female role model.
But things were not different.
“Yes,” Preston agreed. “Your mother knows how to act with company. And you will learn too.”
Violet narrowed her eyes and pushed up from her chair. “No, Daddy, I will not,” she snapped. “I have a voice, and I intend to use it to call out assholes. Which, if I may, includes you right now.”
I blinked rapidly, and even Preston looked shocked for a moment. Our daughter might have been strong-willed, but she never cursed. Never challenged her father or spoke to him that way.