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only hope this sunny attitude would survive the slings and arrows Marion Saxe was sure to throw.
    Farris began his trip to Virginia two days before Clarice had to leave.  The girl had gamely waved goodbye until he turned out of the long driveway; then she locked herself in her cabin and wept.
    Clarice had had to buy two extra suitcases for the new clothes she had bought here.  Though she was still no fashion plate, she had begun to learn how to make the best use of her features.  Dina McGee had even introduced her to an exciting new shampoo. It was like building a new Clarice, but from the inside out. Though the outside had become fresh, the inside and the years of torment would need to be freshened up as well if she was to feel whole.
    But not even her ‘new look’ or the professional adulation she had garnered could comfort Clarice now.  She lay naked on the bed now, rubbing herself intimately and trying to recall the feel of big hands, their roughness strangely softened, and the warm lips and tongue that had caressed her in ways she had never thought possible.  Then there were the grey eyes and that questing face.  Farris had begged for understanding when he looked at her.  In a way, he was a lost little boy.  Maybe most men were inside, and they were just afraid to show it.
    Still, that made her own responsibility all the harder.  Clarice stopped trying to pleasure herself and began to remember the mess she had tried to leave behind her. It was far better to face this than to run as she had initially planned to do. No, she needed to return home and deal with the monster she had lived with since birth. Marion Saxe’s voice still shrieked in the back of her mind, and she wondered how and why she had ever tolerated such persecution . No one deserves this type of treatment, not even me. She thought to herself over and over again as the time drew nearer to return. She began to coach herself, preparing for how she would face whatever came her way in the time to come.
    “I have to be strong,” She muttered to herself, “I have to be strong for me and my future happiness. That is all there is to it.”
    But deep down she knew it would never be that simple, then again, nothing ever was.
    Clarice had also conversed with several psychologists and read a few professional texts online on her situation.  She knew that the road to independence was going to be filled with pitfalls and difficulties, but it was the path she knew she needed to take if she ever wanted any form of happiness in this life. She loved Farris dearly, but her love would have to wait until after the dust had settled from this whole mess with her tyrant of a mother. There was old habits she would have to break, things engraved in her from an early age that needed to be dealt with according. She also knew that her mother would never allow this to happen with a hard core fight, and the storm of her anger was brewing.
    Still, Clarice had made some progress.  Terry McGee’s gentle exposition of the facts of financial life had made her realize just how Marion was cheating her. For years she had dealt with her mother’s reign, somehow feeling that this was the way that life was supposed to be for her, as if it was her fate to forever deal with a heartless and greedy woman controlling her life.  Now she was beginning to assume her own financial responsibility and take control of her own life in the meantime.  Then she had deliberately refused Farris’s offer of marriage, which was the hardest decision she has ever had to make. A choice that, at least for now, had to be made.  That was the thing she had most wanted and that was to stay on his farm and in his arms forever. She would find her way back.
     

Chapter 7
     
    Marion Saxe stalked up and down the tarmac of the small private airfield near her home.  Today, her disobedient daughter who had become famous was coming home, and Marion planned to reassert her control immediately.
    A neatly dressed