“Please ask Mrs. Briggs to join us,” my father requested of him.
“Right away, Sir.” Birch bowed out of the room.
“You cannot allow thish, Orin,” Mother whined at him, her head, grown heavy, slumped into the cup of one palm. “What will they say?”
The omnipotent “they;” the aristocratic, snobby “they.” “They” were always there, always defining who and what we were. “They” were far too elusive, far too “them,” for me to ever care what they thought.
“I am allowing it, Millicent.” My father turned his full face to my mother. He looked at her as I imagined he must have looked on the battlefield.
am“But Orin—”
“You called for me, Sir.” Mrs. Briggs entered the room, dashing away my mother"s tantrum, delaying it. Her dark storm clouds hovered over the horizon, drawing ever near.
“Ah, Mrs. Br
