Susan Wiggs Quote

Equaled her brilliant sister in the classroom. She used to pretend it didn’t matter during the years she and Abigail attended Miss Madinsky’s school together. Alongside the pampered daughters of judges and senators and foreign dignitaries, she would sit with her hands folded atop her desk, her mouth reciting words by rote while her mind wandered a thousand miles away, to distant lands and places in the heart where all fathers were attentive, all lessons were easy and all mothers were alive. Only as an adult did she understand the price of her inability. To her great shame, Helena had never learned to read. Words on a page had always been indecipherable symbols. As a girl, she got by on charm and pretense. She had learned early on that a brilliant smile, a flattering remark, a pointed question had the power to divert even the sturdiest tutor from his task. As a young woman, she found ways to circumvent her shortcoming. There was always someone—her father’s secretary, the housekeeper, her sister—to read things aloud to her because she always managed to be too tired, too busy, too…something. An excuse always came to mind. Soon after William was born, she vowed to learn, and she had even studied old school primers and practiced drawing the letters