*Everly*

 I know I am babbling, talking about nothing of consequence or importance. It irritates me that I worry what people think, that I feel as though I move about with a great big M sewn onto my chest. I see many couples parading about. Surely they aren’t all married.

 And surely if my father had not been ashamed of me, he would have brought me when the park was teeming with people. I don’t doubt that he loved me, but I am beginning to realize that he might not have been as proud of me as he always claimed. He never took me into a dressmaker’s. He never rode...