One..two...three. I counted slowly under my breath, my head turned downwards to watch my feet as they made their slow journey up the gravel driveway. The counting helped to clear my mind.. mainly of the idea of turning around and heading back the way I'd come. Four... five...six. "Just keep counting," I told myself over and over again, "Don't think about it.. just keep counting." In case dear reader your wondering what exactly I was dreading so much ... it was arriving at home. Well... what I'd been told to call home anyways, because take my word for it ... the people waiting for me at the end of the lane were not my idea of "the picture perfect family".
On the contrary over the 6 months I'd had the.. pleasure of knowing them, they had become my idea of living hell! At first, when my father had introduced me to his new wife and her daughter, I'd been full of hope. Even my new step-sister's snide comments had sounded like music to my ears after years of living alone with no one but my nanny and occasionally my father for company. But over time I'd come to realize that my new "mother's" and "sister's" harsh words and ice cold glances were not ( as I'd imagined they were ) some sort of strange initiation ceremony into their midsts but rather... just their usual attitued towards anyone who they saw as "lowly". In actuality it was
they who we're below
me but in their minds eye they were each a queen and nothing , not even my family's waster fortune or the fact that they were only saved from bankruptcy by my step-mothers marriage to my father, would convince them other wise.
One would assume that my father would have had something to say about his new step-wife's and step-daughter's cold attitude towards me but ... my father has never been the affectionate type ... at least not after my mothers death. Before that , according to my nanny, he was quite the affectionate man but since my mother died giving birth to me ... I never had a chance to enjoy that mans company. Nanny always told me that he grew so cold because he blamed himself for his wifes death but its always seemed more likely to me that he blames everyone
but himself.. and that everyone includes me.
Eventually at the count of 45 I arrived at home and letting myself in through the side door I walked into the kitchen and gave my old Nanny a kiss on the cheek. Then with a grin on my face I grabbed one of the cookies she'd been in the process of removing from the oven and doing a strange "Man this cookie is hot" dance headed up the stairs to my bedroom. To be 100 percent accurate I was heading to my new, much smaller and void of almost all furniture bedroom. My old much large, finely furnished one had become the sanctuary of my new sister as soon as my father had left on one of his infamous business trips to who knows where.
It wasn't material comforts of that room I missed so much but rather the fact that the room had once belonged to my mother when she was a young girl living in this house with her family. The room was still exactly as she had left it, a present she had been planning to give to her first born daughter. It bothered me immensely to think of my step-sister, Camellia, sleeping in her bed and storing her ghastly clothes in her closet. Alright so “ghastly” may be a tad of an overstatement.. or more a down right lie since Queen Camellia would never have allowed herself to be seen in anything but the finest of clothes. I've always believed it was this love for finery that lead to the fore mentioned bankruptcy of Camellia and her mother.
TO BE CONTINUED WHEN I HAVE TIME
