Aura Read Free Page B

find her true inner self.

Aura gave him a blank look then shook her head.  "Why should they?  I never attend their parties."  She replied as if stating a fact.

"I know and I think it is about time things changed about the house."

"Somehow I have a feeling this is something we might be sorry trying father, perhaps we should pass on this idea."

"Well I do not happen to agree, so I want you to do me a favor, nor do I want to hear that it is impossible for you to do so.  You went to the same finishing school as the girls and I know you are capable of doing what I am about to ask."

He waited for her to reply and she watched him as their wills clashed.  She did, owe him a favor, and some sort of allegiance, she supposed.  To repay what she felt a clear and definite debt, she pushed her feelings of impending disaster aside and conceded, albeit with severe reservations.

"All right, for you I will give it a try."

"Good," he knew she would not back out after giving her word.  With Aura he could count on that.  He then began to fill her in on his plans.  "I am going to pick you up on Saturday morning and we are going shopping.  That is the first order of business.  After we are going to go to the stylist your mother and stepsisters frequent in order to transform you.  I have had a suspicion for a long time that beneath that neglected exterior dwells an untouched and hidden beauty.  Now I will know for sure."

"Father, this is a mistake."  She warned him once more, feeling a need to voice her misgivings.

"I disagree.  Give me a chance to prove to your mother that she has been wrong about you all of these years Aura."  He pleaded as if looking desperately to bridge the invisible gap between mother and daughter.

Aura said nothing as she watched him rise to leave, but she sadly shook her head as she rose to see him off.  She picked up her snake and walked beside her stepfather in silence, then stood as she watched him drive away, after bidding him a fond farewell.

When he was out of sight she gave a sigh, as she spoke to her snake.  "He will never accept things as they are, will he?  It would make no difference to mother if she could see me looking beautiful, she would just rather not have me alive in the first place."

Tears burned her eyes as she set Roger on the ground to go his own way.  She had never told anyone how, when she had been eight, her mother had, in a fit of fury, told her exactly why she hated her.  She looked like the man who had loved her mother, then left her.  She had found herself with child shortly after he had gone and she had been left alone with his child.  As they shared the same coloring she had become, for her mother, a living and constant memory of the only serious mistake she had ever made in her life.

It had hurt, this declaration of hate and the brutal telling of it by her mother.  Aura had hidden in her room and cried, her child's heart broken to discover that her beautiful perfect mother could never love her.  Nor had the revelation ceased to cause her pain, making her feel the stab of her rejection all over again, as if it had been repeated each time she had cause to remember it.  Matters had not changed between mother and daughter over the years to indicate that they might.  Though Aura never seemed to stop hoping that they would.

True to his word her stepfather reappeared four days later to take her shopping and to have her restyled for the party.  Aura cooperated on everything, anything to make him happy, except for the hairstyle the beautician had wanted to give her.  The woman had suggested that they cut over two feet off of her hair.  There was no damage to the lengths of her hair to warrant such a sacrilege, for, to Aura, that was what it would have amounted to.

Aura walked into the party, amidst a few gasps of surprise, on her stepfather's arm.  At the boutique she had chosen a white satin gown to wear.  He approved of her choice.