Summary: She walks in beauty – and in sorrow?<\/p>\n
Rating: G\u00a0 \u00a0 Word Count:\u00a0 501<\/p>\n
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The Facade<\/strong><\/p>\n As I leave Virginia City, I leave a possible happy future behind as well.\u00a0 I have a reputation now that holds me a prisoner in my present life.\u00a0 I never meant for it to be this way.\u00a0 I am not \u201cthat kind of woman.\u201d\u00a0 But, perhaps, I am?<\/p>\n My parents were teachers.\u00a0 When they married, mother gave up teaching to raise her little girls.\u00a0 Amelia, my older sister, was the darling of my parents\u2019 affections.\u00a0 She was smart and clever.\u00a0 She fit well in my parents\u2019 intellectual world and held her own with their sophisticated friends.\u00a0 I was just the dumb little sister who played with dolls.\u00a0 She stayed up late with the adults; I was sent to my room.<\/p>\n As we grew up, things changed.\u00a0 We began to \u201cblossom\u201d into womanhood.\u00a0 Amelia may have been the brain, but I was turning into the beauty.\u00a0 Boys began to notice me \u2013 they gave me looks and knowing smiles.\u00a0 Hungry for attention, I returned those looks and smiles.\u00a0 The boys taught me things my parents would have been horrified to know I learned.\u00a0 Like my sister, I became a quick learner and an apt student.\u00a0 The boys turned into men; I turned into a beautiful, desirable woman.\u00a0 My childhood \u201clessons\u201d gave me an education that I learned to employ to my benefit.<\/p>\n My life was one of glitter and adventure and I loved it all.\u00a0 Wealthy men took care of me. Women shunned me, but men loved me.\u00a0 At a dazzling party in San Francisco, my escort and another man fought over me.\u00a0 Guns were drawn and blood was shed.\u00a0 One man was dead. The other wounded.\u00a0 That is when I discovered I had a \u201creputation.\u201d\u00a0 I was evil and wicked \u2013 and hated.<\/p>\n I ran away from San Francisco fleeing to the sanctuary of my sister\u2019s home in Virginia City.\u00a0 Reluctantly, Amelia took me in, but I had to promise to live my life her way.\u00a0 Bewildered and frightened, I agreed to become a demure little sparrow.<\/p>\n She was a wealthy woman with influential friends, among them the Cartwrights.\u00a0 I met Hoss Cartwright. He was different from other men.\u00a0 His heart was soon mine.\u00a0 He loved me as a person; not as an ornament; my past did not matter to him.\u00a0 I was not surprised when he asked me to marry him.\u00a0 I readily accepted.<\/p>\n His family, however, did not accept me with the open love that Hoss did.<\/p>\n Adam Cartwright knew me in San Francisco.\u00a0 He confronted me about my \u201clove\u201d for Hoss and sneered at that so called \u201clove.\u201d \u00a0At a party at the Ponderosa, Hoss\u2019 home, his father equally discredited me, trying to \u201cprotect\u201d Hoss from me.\u00a0 Nothing had really changed; this new life was just a fa\u00e7ade.\u00a0 I think I knew it was so all along.\u00a0 But what about Hoss?\u00a0 I knew what I had to do.\u00a0 I just lived up to my reputation.<\/p>\n And so I am leaving Virginia City, my Hoss, and my shattered heart behind.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n ~The End<\/p>\n