“I saw you!” Mother screamed, lunging toward me with a pointed finger. I backed away, my buttocks slamming hard against my desk. If I could have climbed over it, put it between us, I would have. “I saw you with that girl, that foreign servant. How dare you?”
The monster of anger that was my mother chased away my thoughts, my words. I was the fox, and she was on the hunt.
“Do you know what they would say if they saw you?”
“They” could be any number of people.
“You could ruin us. I will not allow it!”
A gust of wind blundered through the open window, pushing against my back, pushing me forward.
“But, Mother, she is…she is in a strange land. I thought only to be kind and—”
“Do not speak to me.” Mother's face was just inches from mine, yet I hardly recognized her. “You will only listen.
