Sample Saturday - Something Fresh

Here's something fresh and new, written early this morning:
~~~

"You needn't think to spend your entire life mourning for that Owen boy."

Ella Ruth Allen Owen hunched over the black bonnet she held on her lap with whitened thumbs and first fingers.

"I simply cannot allow it. Black makes your skin appear so sallow."

What does the color of my complexion matter? Ella Ruth thought as her mother continued to express her cutting opinion. Ben is gone. Dead. I'd gladly join him if I could do so.

It hardly seemed possible that six months had passed since that dreadful day on which Roderick and Julia Owen had paid her a visit and given her the awful news. Ben dead at Waynesboro!

She put a hand to her forehead. "Mama, please stop.  My head aches so. I cannot go with you today." With that, she got to her feet and stumbled out of the parlor, blinking back tears of rage.

When she was safely behind the locked door of the strange bedroom she doubted would ever feel like home, she threw the bonnet to the floor and collapsed into tears.

Her maid Lula, having entered through the unlocked dressing room door, found her there, crumpled atop the bedspread, an hour later.

"There, there, Miss Ella Ruth. Your mama, she's gone off on her visits. Let me turn down the covers and bring you a nice cold cloth for your head."
~~~

That's all for now. Buy a book. Read a book. How about Gone for a Soldier. (Links to other vendors on the "Books" tab at the top of the page.)

See you next week!