A TANGLE OF LIGHT

By Tessa Harvey


    Adrienne wondered why and when she had suddenly grown up. Silly things like how many "likes" you had, how many "air" friends, resting in clouds, silly young men with drugs in one hand and a dog leash in the other. They all seemed surreal, immaterial, transient.
    Why had she thought so much of a thug, for that is how she now saw Jonathan Carter? Why had she been so blind? Somehow Adrienne had always known Jack was not her father. He shared nothing familiar, neither books, nor gestures, nor thoughts. He was an outsider looking in, pretending he saw the windows of her heart, but Jack saw nothing, only himself reflected in all he owned.
    And she had befriended a man like Jack, like the one Elsie had chosen. Was it a bondage to the familiar? She felt lost and confused.
    Her mother had cared for her, she remembered, but then had been more and more absent emotionally. She thought of her beautiful grandfather. Would his God let her gran live? She began to cry, still a child after all.

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