Read Online The Road Taken by Rona Jaffe - Free Book Online

shrine, his brother treated like a temporary guest? But of course she said nothing. She couldn’t be either a friend or a conscience to Celia even though now they had something in common; she had no energy, she didn’t know how to talk about such painful things; their lives were filled with secrets that everyone knew and everyone avoided mentioning.
    “Ben could console you,” Celia said.
    Nothing can console me, Rose thought, touching her engagement ring, thinking of Tom and the loving, peaceful, simple life they had dreamed of having together. But again she said nothing, and finally Celia left the room. The silent often scream inside, Rose thought. I hear you, Celia, why can’t you hear me?

Chapter Six
    Celia was at her wits’ end. She had been looking forward to seeing Rose married, living in a home of her own, so she could put Hugh into Rose’s room and reclaim her sewing room for herself, so she could relax and take care of her own little girls, who were getting bigger and more interesting every day, and attend to her husband, who was getting older and more difficult; but instead Rose was moping around the house like a constant rebuke. Did Rose think she was the only one in the world who had suffered a loss? You went on, you kept busy, you kept up a brave front. Tom Sainsbury had been dead for three years now, and Rose was twenty-one, on her way to becoming a spinster.
    Exciting things were happening all around them. Last year the women finally were given the vote, after the terrible ordeals of the brave suffragettes being force-fed in prison. It made Celia choke just to think about force-feeding, those tubes down their throats. As an adult, Rose would be able to vote for the first time this year, a historic occasion, but she didn’t even read the newspaper to see who and what she wanted to vote for. She needed either a husband or a job, but she was equipped for very little. Celia tried to keep her up to date, but their conversations at breakfast were more like a monologue.
    “Rose,” Celia said today, rattling the newspaper like a gentle reproach. “Didn’t you have a playmate named Elsie, Tom’s younger sister, who died of diabetes? We used to call it the sugar disease, and we thought it came from having eaten too much sugar as a child. The doctors would make the parents starve their children, but it didn’t work. Well, it says here in the paper that a doctor named Banting has discovered the cause of diabetes, that it comes from not having enough of something called insulin, and he has found the cure too. It’s called Banting’s Extract, and it’s made from the ground-up pancreas of animals. They say it will be available in a few years. Isn’t that wonderful! So many people will be saved.”
    “A miracle,” Rose said, but her look said that it was too late. Her look always said it was too late, whatever you told her. She was drowning in self-pity.
    A few men had come to call on Rose, but she drove them all away. Even William was concerned, and Celia didn’t want him to get upset because he already had pains in his heart when he was agitated, and sometimes he couldn’t catch his breath. But today she was going to get Rose headed toward a life, whether Rose liked it or not.
    “I’ve been thinking, Rose,” Celia went on firmly. “They’re looking for an intelligent woman to work in the office at the shipyard. You would just fit the bill. You were always good with sums. Why don’t you and I go down there today and talk to them?”
    “That’s a good idea, Rose,” her father said. “You’ll certainly meet strong, healthy young men at the shipyard. I would like to see you go out. You’re alone too much.”
    Rose looked at them blankly and went on serving the oatmeal, stirring big spoonfuls of butter and sugar into it the way her father liked it, and topping it with heavy cream. She handed it to him as he pushed aside his finished plate of bacon and fried eggs: bacon crisp, eggs over light,