Free Jane Austen Girl by Inglath Cooper Page A

blinking cursor. When the conversations got too personal, the questions too intense, she just backed out. That was the great thing about the Internet. Now you see her. Now you don’t. A girl could be her own Houdini.
    She closed her eyes, leaned her head against the desk chair. She heard her father’s voice, his words pounding at her temples. Maybe you could tell her how to get pregnant and force the guy to marry her.
    Somewhere deep inside, maybe she’d always known the truth. She wondered now if this was something a baby could feel, even inside its mother, whether it was wanted or not.
    For Andy, hearing the truth was like throwing light across the nagging feeling she’d always had about her parents’ marriage. She got up and walked over to the bed, dropping onto the pillows. She rolled over and curled up in a ball, her knees drawn tight against her chest.
    From beneath her bed, Tangerine meowed, then shimmied out and jumped up beside her. She rubbed a hand across the back of the orange tabby cat, smiling a little as he arched high, his tail straight in the air.
    He meowed again, then leaned down to rub his face against hers. She pulled him close and held him in the curve of her arm while he began to purr, the noise rising in volume until it sounded like the idling engine of a small car.
    She’d spotted him on the side of the road one morning when her daddy had been driving her to school. At first, she’d thought it might be a little roll of yarn someone had tossed out the window, but after seeing it move, Andy had pleaded with him to stop. They’d pulled over to the side of the road, and she’d jumped out, running back to the spot where the little orange kitten sat, mewling. As gently as she could, Andy had picked him up, a soft cry of despair erupting from her throat at the sight of his crusted-together eyes and the little body that was nothing but fur and bones.
    They’d driven him straight to the vet who’d pronounced him blind from the infection that had gone too far to save his vision. With the realization that he would never see, Andy had cupped the tiny kitten to her chest and promised she would take care of him for the rest of his life.
    And she had.
    He never left her room, his food and water bowl always placed in the same spot where he knew to find them. The same for his litter box. He roamed the room as if he could see every inch of it, napping on the windowsill in the afternoon sun, waiting by the door for her return and pouncing on her shoestrings when she did with absolute joy for the game.
    Sometimes, Flo would sleep with them at night, and the cat would curl up on the pillow beside the dog’s head, purring them both to sleep.
    Andy wished all love could be as simple as her love for Tangerine and his for her. It really wasn’t that complicated, was it? Love was just needing and being needed. People made it complicated. Her mom. Her dad. Kyle.
    A knock at the door made her jump. “Andy. Honey. Please. Let’s talk.”
    She heard the worry beneath each word in her father’s voice and squeezed her eyes shut tight, refusing to let herself care. “I think I’ve heard about all I need to hear for one night,” she said.
    “Let’s not leave things like this.”
    “Not now, Daddy. I don’t want to talk now.”
    Silence. And then finally, she heard his footsteps receding down the hallway.
    For now, she wasn’t going to think about her mother or her father or Kyle. She would focus on what was immediately ahead and nothing else. Winning the Jane Austen Girl contest. She put on her pajamas and climbed into bed. Tangerine curled up next to her, and under his soft roar of contentment, Andy finally closed her eyes and went to sleep.

 
     
    Inner peace has its own stamp of beauty. Settle up with your old issues. Left unresolved, they can fume away inside you like a toxic chemical and eventually make their way to the surface in the form of worry lines and other signs of premature aging.
    Grier