Driving Lessons Excerpt

Austen Update: Book three, Mansfield Park. Love Fanny Price.

Just ran across this passage in my work in progress and I had one of those, “LIKE!” moments where I’m surprised that my character really filled the page like she does in my head. Wish I had more of these moments :)

From Chapter 2 of a very rough draft:

I remember with perfect clarity the moment Owen walked into the hospital room the day after Willie was born, carrying a big brown teddy bear in a t-shirt that read, “It’s a BOY!” Owen was wearing a smile and what Dad called his “civvies.” I had a picture of Owen in uniform on my dresser at home, but I’d know him anywhere because for as long as I could remember, he was my Owen.

When I was eight and he was getting ready to ship out, I told everyone I would grow up while he was gone and he would come home and marry me. When I was ten and Owen was stationed overseas and I heard he’d married Terry, I cried and vowed never to speak to him again. He came home a year later with his new wife and scooped me up in his arms and declared that I looked just like my mom when she was my age and that’s when he’d fallen in love with her, but Dad had won the battle and the fair maiden and he’d had to go slay dragons in another port and the rest was history. He told me to hold out my hand, and I did, and he placed in it a fluffy little dragon with fierce red eyes and I’d forgiven him even though my heart was broken.

I’d last seen Owen two years ago. A lot of growing up can happen to a girl in two years, so when he walked through the door, I wasn’t sure what I would feel. He winked at me and waved the teddy bear, and I smiled back, and I realized that I was almost sixteen and he was just one of Dad’s friends now, not my Owen any longer. It made my heart feel a tiny bit heavier.