Free America's First Daughter: A Novel by Stephanie Dray, Laura Kamoie Page B

unsafe for the legislators. So, Congress was called to Annapolis, and three days later, Papa left for Maryland without me. All I knew, all I could see, was that I’d been abandoned in a huge, bustling city amongst strangers.
    At first, panic left me inconsolable upon my borrowed bed. Despair rushed in close behind, making me listless and sullen. I was sure that I’d never see my beloved Papa again. At least I’d said my good-byes to Mama before she was taken from us. And she was taken; she hadn’t left of her own accord.
    Not like Papa, who wanted to join her.
    My distress was such that I struggled to keep down the victuals Mrs. Hopkinson served at her table. She wasn’t an unkind woman, but she urged me to pray for God’s solace, and she prayed often. Loudly.
    I had a bevy of exotic tutors—the French Mr. Cenas, who taught dancing, the English Mr. Bentley, who taught music, the Swiss Mr. Simitière, who taught art, and a special tutor for the French language, too. But I didn’t wish to learn anything. Without my sisters or my papa, I didn’t even wish to rise from bed. My stomach pains worsened, but I feared Mrs. Hopkinson didn’t believe me, for the only tonic she offered was a morning prayer.
    Prayers were not, however, on the schedule Papa wrote out for me. So, I tried to devote myself to my studies—save for drawing, for which I had no capacity. Even Mr. Simitière said so. Fervently and repeatedly. All my efforts ended in my nervous stomach emptying its contents into a bowl I held in filthy hands, smudges of graphite on my fingers and clothes.
    Someone must’ve reported this to Papa, for his next letter from Annapolis upbraided me for slovenliness. “ Let your clothes be clean, whole, and properly put on, ” he wrote. “ For nothing is so disgusting to our sex as the want of cleanliness and delicacy in yours. ”
    These were the harshest words Papa had ever put to me, and to see the reprimand written so starkly on paper, I gasped and clutched at my stomach, which again tossed with humiliation and upset. Mrs. Hopkinson pulled my trembling body against her sweaty bosom, trying to hush me. “Poor child. Pray for an acquiescent spirit so that you obey your father’s commands. Surely you know your papa does God’s work, so we must relieve him of temporal worries.” Her words echoed Mama’s, and everyone in Philadelphia said that my papa was a great man and that we must put before our own desires a worry for our new country.
    But, wickedly, like Colonel Randolph, I no longer cared a fig for it.
    Instead, I burned with resentment, angrier with my father than I’d ever been. Papa wanted me to send him my drawings, but he didn’t reply when I did. Indeed, it seemed there were a great many things that Papa wished from me while none of my wishes mattered at all. So I wrote Papa only when he wrote to me. And when my drawing teacher couldn’t recognize my sketch of Monticello as having any merit, I tore it to bits, prompting Mr. Simitière to quit his post.
    Six months passed in Philadelphia.
    Christmas. The New Year. Winter. Spring.
    It wasn’t until May that Papa finally came to fetch me.
    I spied through the window the back of a tall man wearing an embroidered blue coat. And, as he made his way to the door, I caught a glimpse of ginger hair beneath his black tricorn hat. I wanted to leap up from my chair and cry “Papa!”
    But instead, I waited sullenly while the white-aproned matriarch of the household ushered my father inside. Though I was angry with him for having abandoned me, words could not express my relief at seeing my father again.
    While he thanked Mrs. Hopkinson for looking after me, my eyes hung on every detail of his features, looking for any evidence that time had wrought changes. The straight set of his spine and the animation of his blue eyes revealed that he was glad to see me, and it softened the hardest edges of my anger.
    “How is my girl?” Papa asked, opening his arms to me. I