daughters

Janet Sommer's skin was the texture of leather and the tint of gunmetal. Both traits matched her disagreeable personality. I cannot understand her rare and unsolicited affinity towards me. I later came to realize that she more than likely would have offered me the choice of her two daughters. The older daughter Emily, flat-chested and ruddy, was nature's successful attempt to smooth and arrange her mother's features handsomely. Emily shared her mother's sharp tongue, it was probably her exterior beauty that made this quality easier to take.

The younger daughter, Trisha, was the picture of all things beautiful and delicate. Trisha wore youthful emotion prominently and freely; ecstatic, to broken-hearted, and back again in the span of an afternoon. Being near her was to experience all of life rushing in, with no boundaries or limits. So prominent was her youthful exuberance, one was convinced that it would remain a life-long trait. She was Beauty and Life interlaced with mint, lavender and desire.

At first meeting, it was her fatuous spirit that was most noticeable. Obvious, and most often based on a floating scale of childish attraction. On closer scrutiny, beneath the infatuations and youthful pranks, deeper emotions were present - a virtue that develops more quickly in some young women. She took great pains to conceal this side of her personality; vague clues only hinted at, a serious glance, a veiled question. It was these hints, hidden behind youthful giddiness, that I found myself misinterpreting, or missing altogether.