Welcome to the Fifteen Minute Novel. Each morning I spend fifteen minutes writing on a singular story line. Each morning starts with the last line of the previous day. The goal is to get a (very) rough draft out of the simple story idea and to avoid letting the story idea languish in limbo forever, actually writing it out. This is the third year I have done this writing experiment and each year I learn just a little bit about myself and the way I write as well as creating a framework for the story. But without further ado…
Day 42: Mrs. Lewis told her that it was just because she wasn’t used to children, but she remembered their housekeeper thinking it a bit odd as well.
Mrs. Lewis told her that it was just because she wasn’t used to children, but she remembered their housekeeper thinking it a bit odd as well. As she showered, Gwen thought of Joanne. She was the house keeper for years but refused to be called by anything other than her given name with Gwen. As she was the one who most often looked out for her when her mother was ill and then later after her father re-married, Gwen appreciated the lack of formality. It was like having a friend.
She frowned as she thought back to the first days when Sharron joined the house. Joanne told her things would be changing.
“You’ll have a new mother now,” Joanne said. “She’ll be looking after you more as she settles in and you must promise me not to give her a hard time.”
Gwen remembered agreeing to it in much the same way as she agreed with Mrs. Lewis about being happy her father was remarrying as he deserved some happiness in his life and needed to move on past her mother’s death.
‘But that hadn’t really happened,’ Gwen recalled. Sharron at first reacted as though Gwen was an escaped beast that might turn on her at any6 moment. Joanne and Mrs. Lewis told her to be encouraging. Gwen remembered Joanne trying to ask Sharron about the things she wanted where Gen was concerned. Sharron always told Joanne to continue doing whatever it was that had been done before.
In the house Sharron usually managed to be in a different part than wherever Gwen happened to be. Gwen saw her at meal times and even then only when her father made it home. At that time the three of them would eat together with Sharron talking to her father most of the meal and rarely to her. If her father didn’t make it home to dinner, then Sharron ate alone and told Joanna to take care of Gwen or Gwen to take care of herself after Joanne left. Gwen was never sure if Sharron didn’t like her specifically or if she didn’t like children at all.
The only real interaction she had with Sharron involved the public appearance of the family. In public Sharron would be effusive and talk to the others as though she was just as involved as if Gwen was her own child. They came into conflict when anything Gwen did in public might lead to a contradiction in that image.
‘Joanne thought it strange,’ Gwen thought to herself as she rinsed out the conditioner and put some body wash on her mesh scrubbie. It was because Joanne thought Sharron’s behavior odd that Gwen didn’t think she was imagining things.
She scrubbed down her body and found herself more tired than before. Gwen rinsed out her scrubby and placed it beside the almost empty containers. She rinsed off the last of the soap and turned off the water. She picked up a towel and began drying herself off.
As she dressed in her pajamas and made certain the towel was stretched out to dry, Gwen tried to search herself to find out how she felt about the possibility of Sharron and her father getting a divorce. She moved to the sink to brush her teeth and decided she felt nothing.
Ten til Midnight 