Free The Saffron Gate by Linda Holeman

challenged me for so long. In fact I couldn't remember the last time I had learned something new. Had felt proud of any accomplishment.
I lowered my chin and tried to modulate my voice. 'It's just that . . . it's been given to you, Dad. If you don't want it, I'll have it.'
He shook his head. 'As I said, you couldn't—'
'I could. And I will. You'll see,' I said. I thought, suddenly, of my mother, and how I hadn't told her how much I appreciated all she'd done for me until she lay dying. 'And Dad?'
He was busy with his pipe again, but stopped and looked at me.
'Can't you let me do this for you? Drive you where you want to go? See you enjoy being out in a beautiful car? You spent most of your life driving other people. You've spent all your life doing things for me. Now I can drive you. Let me drive you, Dad,' I said. 'Please. Let me do something for you.'
He didn't answer, but his expression changed, softened, and I knew then that the Silver Ghost would be mine.
Once the car was delivered to our yard, my father did teach me to drive it, and I took pride in the fact that he was obviously surprised at how quickly I mastered it. It was true, as he'd said, that I had a certain difficulty because I didn't have a lot of strength in my right leg, and the knee didn't bend freely. But even though he saw that I could manage, my father still worried, knowing my foot's reflex was poor.
Immediately I discovered that I loved driving the Silver Ghost, and from the first time I took it out on my own. I felt a sense of power I had never before experienced. Behind the steering wheel I forgot my heavy limp; with the top down and my hair whipped loose, I achieved the almost forgotten pleasure of moving quickly. Perhaps it reminded me a bit of running.
That first summer of owning the car I ventured out frequently, not only through the country, but also into the heart of the city, where people didn't know me. The car drew attention, and I developed a new and rather proud smile, nodding at those whose eyes lingered on the sleek outlines of the car and then looked at me. I felt an undeniable pride in not only, owning it, but driving it proficiently, and suddenly I wasn't just Sidonie O'Shea, the woman with the limp who lived with her father on the outskirts of the city.
In the height of that steamy summer I drove deep into the countryside, waving at children walking along the ruts of the dusty back roads of Albany County. I'd leave the car at the side of the road and tramp through the tangled thickets and marshes, sometimes coming to one of the ponds that dotted the area. I sat at the edge of the water and sketched the bulrushes and the wild flowers. I watched the beavers in all their industry, the squirrels and rabbits working their way through the underbrush, the birds swooping and nesting. Frogs gulped and insects whirred around my head. I found new flora, wild plants I had no name for, and. I sketched them with quick, rough lines so I could identify them from the pages of the growing pile of botanical books in my room. By the time I returned to the car, my clothes would be streaked with perspiration, burrs caught in my hem and my hair damp and wild from the humidity.
I couldn't wait to get home so I could paint what I'd sketched. And there was a difference in my paintings that summer. Something about driving had made my wrists and fingers and even my shoulders looser, so that my brushstrokes were freer. The colours I chose were richer, deeper.
Once, as I finished a painting of an Eastern Phoebe on its nest of mud and moss, I stood back from it, studying it. And what I saw so pleased me that I picked up Cinnabar and did a shuffling movement about the room. I think I was dancing.
I know I was happy.
When the first heavy snow of winter came, it was too difficult to get the car out of the yard, and I had to give up driving for those long, dreary months. I spent the winter longing for the throaty rumbling of the engine, the slight vibration of the