Free Shaken to the Core by Jae

and the only son of a millionaire.”
    The words her mother wasn’t saying hung heavily between them. Alice was about the same age as Kate, and she had landed the kind of husband Kate’s parents wanted for their daughter. “Yes,” Kate repeated dutifully. “Wonderful. Just wonderful. If you don’t mind, I’ll go up to my room now.”
    Her mother nodded and let her go.
    The newspaper still in her hand, Kate trudged to the door and stepped out into the hall.
    Giuliana was still on her knees, her back to Kate as she scrubbed the carpet. Her rhythmic motions made her skirt swish back and forth, drawing Kate’s attention toward her pleasantly rounded backside.
    What are you doing? You know it’s not right to look at other women that way. But she knew that admonishment wouldn’t help. She had always looked at her classmates with more appreciation than was proper, and as the years had gone by, that strange affliction showed no sign of letting up. The only thing she could do was ignore it as much as possible.
    She wrenched her gaze away and directed it at the newspaper clutched in her hand. For the first time, she noticed the words beneath Alice’s photograph: copyrighted by Frances Benjamin Johnston.
    Her brooding thoughts evaporated like the fog on a warm summer day. Miss Frances B. Johnston had been Kate’s idol since the day she’d leafed through a copy of her mother’s subscription to the Ladies’ Home Journal. In an article, Miss Johnston—a famous photographer who traveled Europe unescorted and opened her own photographic studio—encouraged women to take up photography as a means to support themselves. She had photographed diplomats, admirals, and leading political figures, including President McKinley right before his assassination. According to the Amador Ledger, Miss Johnston would also be the photographer who would get to take Alice Roosevelt’s wedding portrait—an opportunity that any photographer, male or female, would have given his or her right arm for.
    Maybe it was a sign. Kate didn’t have to follow Miss Roosevelt’s example by marrying a wealthy man and forever giving up her dreams. She could strive for the life that Frances B. Johnston was living. It wouldn’t be easy, but it might still be possible. All she needed was a chance to prove herself. Now with a spring to her step, she climbed the stairs to her room, already thinking about what she could do.
    * * *
    “This roast is delicious,” Kate’s father said.
    Her mother beamed as if she had prepared dinner single-handedly.
    Kate couldn’t care less about the roast. Her mind wasn’t on dinner. She kept glancing out the window. Darkness had fallen, and the gas streetlamps threw patches of light onto the cobblestones.
    Great. Here she was, stuck at the table with her parents, while every reporter and newspaper photographer had hastened to City Hall at nightfall.
    It was as if architects had planned the layout with that purpose in mind, because the bronze-domed building held not just City Hall but also the police station and the Central Emergency Hospital. If you wanted to report on anything interesting happening in the city—rumors about corrupt politicians, crimes, arrests, or accidents—all you had to do was lie in wait at the main entrance. Easy, at least if you were a man.
    For Kate, however, things weren’t quite that effortless. She couldn’t very well take the cable car down to Market Street and wander the streets alone at night. Even if she made it to City Hall unmolested, she couldn’t stroll into the emergency hospital and play cards with the doctors on duty, as the other newspaper people did.
    One thing was sure: opportunity wouldn’t just drop into her lap while she sat around and ate roast. If she wanted to become a newspaper photographer, she needed to prove herself to the Call’ s editor.
    Instead of returning to her room after dinner, she snuck into the darkroom to ready her camera. She carefully cleaned the lens and