When I was younger, I remember sitting in my room for hours and rubbing my neck and throat, trying to see if I could find a hole somewhere or something that would explain what made me different from the other children in Cliving. There was never anything I found, of course, but I still kept rubbing and looking every day. Father came and found me one day, and he got really sad. I guess he knew what I was doing, and why. Fathers always seem to know things like that. He made me promise that I wouldn't do it anymore, and he kept going on and on about how nothing was wrong with me and stuff like that. Back then, I just thought he was lecturing me, but now I am really glad he gave me that lesson.
When I was older, somewhere along in my teens, I started to court a young man who moved to Cliving from Harwick. He was nice, and funny, and I swore up and down that I was utterly in love with him. When he broke things off with me, I was devastated. I spent almost two years with that man, and all in one day he had decided that everything was over. It had been a few days when I found one of his undershirts tucked into my dresser, and I walked into the main room of the house and father simply held his hand out for it, no questions asked. I don't know what he did with it, perhaps threw it away when I wasn't around to see, or maybe just hidden it. Fathers always know to do stuff like that.
Later, it had been discovered that another girl in Cliving was with child, and he was rumored to be the father. They were wed only a week after we broke things off. Ealbrand and Leofwynn had set off to go find him, but father talked them down. Not that he wasn't just as angry, of course, but I knew that they would have killed that man, and I think father knew that too. And just because that man made poor decisions, shouldn't mean that his child should only have a mother.
When I left Cliving to go find my mother and sister in Bree, he wasn't angry with me. He actually encouraged me to go find them, and meet the rest of my family. He and my brothers saw me off, and we wrote back and forth while I was gone. When I returned, heavily pregnant, they took me in with open arms and no judgment. Later, when I told them about Trastan dying, they didn't try to coddle me or anything of that sort. I think the only thing that ever stumped my father was when Meredith was born dead. He didn't know what to say to me, or how to comfort me. But he was there, ever lingering around and I think that was enough.
All in all, I am not like most of the people I have met in Bree. My family was a good one, and I was well taken care of. I wasn't forced onto the streets, I didn't have to sell myself to make coin, and I've never killed anyone like most Bree-landers seem to think is so amazingly edgy. I don't think I will ever be able to repay my father for all he has done.
