Miss Prior - Book #1

Chapter 2

Saying goodbye was hard. Mollie was definitely the sentimental type, attachments grew fierce in her. Almost every object she possessed had a story behind it, a memory that she'd need to cherish. In her opinion, that involved keeping said object. As a disastrous result, her room had an excess of things she definitely did not need to keep.

Her eyes scanned one last time over her rather large room. The bed was neatly made, the white satin sheets spread mostly flat across her feather filled mattress (aside from a few crinkles). It's made for no one, Mollie thought. The cold metal of her door handle iced slowly underneath her skin. She shuddered and walked out of the room she was saying a final farewell to.

"Goodbye." A soft hand reached out, stroking the wooden doorframe as she whispered. Others may have found it odd that she was speaking heartfelt to a room empty of other people. Mollie, however, found nothing weird at all about it. Everything to her had a certain resonance to it, everything gave off a certain song, a tune.

She clutched the case in her left hand, walking down the wooden hallway. Boots making loud noises as she went along. In her right hand, the she held her savings in a small leather satchel. It felt alien to her, a spur of the moment decision leading to a life change. She didn't want to turn back now, she couldn't turn back now. Something different was probably just what she needed.

It had been an hour since she left her fathers presence and she was just going to suddenly walk back in and announce her departure. She must be mad. The most likely scenario was that she definitely was. Mollie was strangely at peace with that. Surely enough, he sat in the same spot. His eyes looked considerably more glazed over and the whisky flask looked a lot more empty. She sighed at the poor sight.

All of a sudden, she felt horribly ill. The butterflies in her stomach were rising up towards her throat, hitting the inside of her mouth. It would be nice if not metaphorical. To have an array of butterflies leave her mouth and flutter around the room, would be beautifully poetic. The real world is rarely so elevated.

Mollie walked slowly towards him, not bothering to wait for permission to enter this time. Was this a bad idea? Yes, definitely. There was no doubt about that. But bad decisions and horrid regrets had to happen to move one forward. That was how the world worked.

"I'm leaving."  Mollie decided to bluntly state it. What else was she supposed to do? No amount of sweet build up could soften the blow. Better to rip the bandage off quickly than pull it slowly. Her Mother taught her that when Mollie was so much younger, so much more indecisive. That was one of the only memories she retained of her, along with that the hazy memory of her appearance. They had no photographs of her, and the portrait of her was hidden away in the locked storage room. Father never wanted to hang it with the rest of the relatives paintings.

He didn't respond, verbally or physically, there was nothing. It was unknown whether he didn't believe her or whether he was just ignoring her every word. Likely that it was both. "Did you hear me?" A surge of bravery had fallen upon her. Temporary, no doubt, but lucky all the same. "I'm leaving, moving to London." His head recoiled upwards and his back straightened. Mollie didn't flinch, nor did she recoil backwards. She stood her ground, eyeing danger in the face. It was always Ada who was best at that, not Mollie.

"You don't have my best interests at heart, Father. You don't have any of my interests at heart, only your own." The truth she had for so long wanted to say spilled now, simply just because she could. There was no ulterior motive to her words, no revenge, no plot, no spite. Just the relief of knowing that speaking her mind was allowed. "I am not going to let you live a life you never had through me. I need to think for myself, and here I can't do that."

The expression on his face was unreadable. It was a bubbling mix of every single emotion under the sun surfacing as a blank look. "You don't have the skills to live alone. You don't know what the real working world is like." He turned to face her, lips pursed into a thin, straight line.