Kerri Maniscalco

“Please. Don’t scream. You’ll ruin everything.”

“Wield your assets like a blade, Cousin. No man has invented a corset for our brains. Let them think they rule the world. It’s a queen who sits on that throne. Never forget that. There’s no reason you can’t wear a simple frock to work, then don the finest gown and dance the night away. But only if it pleases you.”

“Those who deserve respect are given it freely. If one must demand such a thing, he’ll never truly command it. I am your daughter, not your horse, sir.”

He’d been hovering around me as if I were the sun his universe revolved around ever since he’d let me past one of his many emotional walls. Something to ponder another day.

“You must know what you mean to me? Surely you must know how I feel about you, Audrey Rose. The thought of losing you…”

Where in a medical dictionary does it say a woman cannot handle such things? What is a man’s soul made of that a woman’s is not?

I dreamed of a day when girls could wear lace and makeup—or no makeup at all and don burlap sacks if they desired—to their chosen profession without it being deemed inappropriate.

Father’s fears would not become my own and hold me back from what needed to be done.

Science was an altar I knelt before, and it blessed me with solace.

“You would miss me terribly and know it. Just as I would miss you in ways I cannot fathom, should we ever part.”