Her POV
I guess you could say I'm a cliche. Yet, as my mother always told me, they are cliches for a reason.
I am the frumpily dressed, bunned, bespectacled quiet woman who always seems to find her hero in 280 pages simply by unpinning her hair, putting on some makeup, and trying to be sexy (which never works as intended, but she gets the man anyway cause she's just so darn cute!). However, unlike the heroines of some torrid romance novels, I am still me with or without the glasses and unbound hair.
I was at the top of my graduating classes in both high school and college. I even graduated early with my bachelor's simply because I had no life and the library was my second home. Also, it took me until I was 27 to lose my virginity -- not through lack of interest on my part, but more lack of interest on anyone else's.
I am a small town girl with a big city heart, but through unfortunate circumstances, I was forced to leave Chicago and come back to the place I worked so hard to leave behind. It was, as most storied cliches go, the result of a death in the family. My father's, to be precise.
Now don't mistake my seeming lack of grief. I loved the old man, but he was such a tyrant in my life as well as any woman within his sphere, I was forced to move 2000 miles East to escape his influence. Yet, somehow, even in death he managed to thwart me and bend me to his will. Both in the literal and figurative sense (I am a humourous person occasionally--even I surprised myself with that witticism).
My mother called me one Saturday morning to inform me of my father's upcoming funeral. Oh, did I mention I wasn't home and she left it as a message on my voice mail? At any rate, I flew home as soon as I could clear it with my boss, and that is how my life took the unexpected turn.
Unbeknownst to me, though hardly surprising since years before I had quite forcefully let my father know in no uncertain terms I wanted nothing to do with him or his life, he had been forced to take on a partner in his law firm. I rarely came home for the holidays and so I'd never met Mr. Henry James Ryan, Jr.
To be honest, meeting the man of all your wet dreams at a wake is definitely not the place I would've picked, but as Fate would have it (the bitch) that's where I first met him. Well, kind of.
At 5'8" and more pounds then I'd like to admit to, I am not a petite woman (though I've read enough romance novels to wish I was). I had missed the funeral entirely due to bad weather that kept my plane circling for more than an hour before being released to land.
I know my mother would be angry in the death glare white-lipped kind of way, but wouldn't say a word until all of the guests left, so I figured I was safe for at least three or four hours (or more depending if the sobbing turned into a party as wont to do when a bunch of Irish get together in one place for more than 10 minutes).
I grabbed the handle of my suitcase and threw money at the cabbie. I could tell by the line of cars that circled the block, I would be engulfed by a mass of relatives and family friends who would be anxious to share their grief over such a great man's death. Wanting to postpone the inevitable a little longer, I walked around towards the back of the house.