Read Online Shaken to the Core by Jae - Free Book Online Page B

mother’s face and found nothing but truthfulness. It felt as if a heavy weight that had rested on her chest for the last eight years had been lifted. “Did Father?”
    “No,” her mother said firmly. “No. You know he loves you.”
    “But he loved Corny too, and Corny could have taken over Father’s shipping business.” Kate tried to keep her voice from cracking.
    Her mother rubbed Kate’s hand between both of hers. “You’ll marry and have a family. Your husband and sons will carry on the business.” She peered beneath the table at Kate’s skirt. “But for that to happen, we can’t have the eligible bachelors thinking you’re behaving in an unseemly way.”
    “This is a new century, Mother. Wearing a motoring outfit and driving an automobile is no longer improper behavior for a woman. Women can have pastimes other than needlework and can even hold down a job nowadays. In fact…” Kate took a deep breath. Maybe now was the time to tell her mother of her efforts to seek employment with the San Francisco Call.
    But before she could do it, her mother got up and went over to her overstuffed armchair. She picked up a newspaper before joining Kate at the table again. “It might be a new century, and on the surface a lot of things might have changed, but deep down things are still the same. When you were a little girl, people might have found it endearing when you spoke your mind or when you later spent all your time taking photographs of people and tinkering with dangerous chemicals in that darkroom of yours, but—”
    “They aren’t dangerous if you know what you’re doing. I know as much about chemistry as any man my age.”
    “That’s just it. You are not a man. And you’re no longer a child. Most young women your age are already married. You should spend your time getting serious about one of your suitors, not taking photographs or driving an automobile.”
    Kate sighed. She’d heard that sentence for years, and she was sick and tired of it. “You’d think becoming an adult would afford me more freedom, not less. Why must it mean I have to give up everything I hold dear?”
    Her mother gave her a smile that appeared almost wistful.
    For a moment, Kate wondered what her mother had given up when she had come of age and had gotten married. Or had she always been the way she was now, focused on her family and her home, with few interests other than the occasional charity work?
    “Being an adult means doing the responsible thing,” her mother said. “Even Alice Roosevelt seems to finally realize that. See?” She slid the newspaper she had picked up from the armchair over to Kate, who turned it around to read it.
    It was the Amador Ledger , the newspaper published in Jackson, California, where Mother’s grandfather had struck it rich mining for gold. One of her sisters still lived there and sent her news from home from time to time. This issue’s headline said, Miss Alice to wed.
    Kate stared at the newspaper. President Roosevelt’s daughter was getting married? To Kate, Alice had always represented the modern woman—someone who was free to set and achieve her own goals. Granted, the First Daughter didn’t seem to have any particular goal in life. She’d always been a bit of a rebel, outspoken and unconcerned with other people’s opinions of her. Newspapers all over the country reported on her antics—drinking gin, smoking on the roof of the White House, betting on horses, and tearing around the capital in her automobile.
    Sometimes, Kate wished she could be more like Alice Roosevelt. Not the gin and the cigarettes, but defying the expectations of her family and society. And now the rebellious First Daughter was about to give up her independence and be a proper wife? Somehow, it felt like a personal betrayal to Kate.
    “A grand wedding in the White House…Won’t it be wonderful?” Her mother got a little dreamy-eyed. “Have you seen the photograph of her intended? He’s a congressman