Lust.

A "deadly sin" as it was most often regarded as. In years passed, Laura's mind wandered with thought concerning the six other cardinal sins, but never lust. Her youth prevented her from wrapping her mind around a concept she was allowed to know of but not allowed to fully understand.

Pride, gluttony, avarice, envy, wrath, and sloth. You name it, Laura's overbearing mother had accused her of it. These supposedly sinful behaviors were typically borne of the most innocent actions in childhood: Coveting a girl who had a more extensive collection of hair ribbons than you, throwing a tantrum as children will expectedly do, and multiple other sins of excess continued.

Laura was convinced at a young age that her mother had nothing to lose given her overly critical demeanor towards her; They were blood, mother and daughter, and no matter what her mother said or how she acted their ties could never be severed. Laura depended upon her and that would not change.

Jane Avery (née Clark) was a woman with a spirit of iron; Twice widowed, at one point in time living on the streets of Boston shortly after the death of her first husband, selling her body to provide for her infant daughter. She knew what it was to sit on the cold pavement in the night, damp and hungry and cradling a mewling bundle who was even hungrier.

Jane's second marriage was a popular customer. Laura was barely four, but was cognitive enough to recognize this man had no fatherly relations with her. His name was simply John, and he was big and loud and often smelled unpleasant. Six months after their modest nuptials, Jane was pregnant and John was dead from small pox.

To say Jane had lived a tumultuous life for some time was likely an understatement. Yet, she was a woman of God in all of her dark years. She had hardened, but (somehow) her faith grew stronger still. She was a woman of God when she was given a hemophiliac son in July of 1765 and she remained a woman of God until the day she died.

Faith was something Jane drilled into Laura's very being, often leading Laura to endure much internal conflict. Laura couldn't complain though; She realized her mother's struggles and her need for solace. God couldn't talk back to you in Jane's eyes. Many believed He did, but as far as Jane was concerned she couldn't hear any sort of voice in her head and she liked it that way. One-sided conversations always did appeal to her.

Jane guided her children using the Fear of God. End of summer, 1767: Laura was six and her sickly son, Paul, had just turned two. Jane buttoned her blouse all the way to her throat and vowed to never walk the streets at night again. She took her children to the chapel down the street to have them baptized and proceeded to read them passages from the bible every night.

By September, Jane had taken up work as a hat maker at her cousin's millinery shop in town. If it had not been for her work, Jane would have gathered her family and fled Boston altogether. Instead, she fixed up a tidy household on the outskirts of the city, barely bordering on where the frontier began. Getting to work may have been a bit of a hassle in the winter, but the real worth was held in the assurance of her children's general well-being devoid of city living.

Laura enjoyed this in-between life; At least, that's how she thought of it whilst growing up with the constant contradiction of bustling city streets and the wildness of the forest which was only a mile or two from her backyard. As Paul grew older Jane would often take him to work with her in order to keep track of him in his condition; He was a pale little thing that didn't speak much.

Jane was especially protective of him. In a way, Laura resented her mother's indulgence in the weak boy, yet she understood her need to coddle him. Paul couldn't talk back, just like God.

Laura's mother reveled in this. Jane was a woman in control, as she had been for the majority of her life. The old saying did ring true as far as Laura was concerned: You can't teach an old dog new tricks.

In this, Laura understood her mother's opposition to her existence; Defiance was as much a deadly sin as any of the original seven. Laura and Jane were far too much alike, far too stubborn to stand being in the same room with each other for an extended period of time. Still, by the end of the day every day Jane was sitting in Laura's room, bible in hand, reading on monotonously. It never failed.

Laura grew lonely, especially in the winter. Jane would often have to spend nights in Boston with Paul, the trek back home too treacherous for fragile Paul to endure in the bitter cold and blinding flurries of snow.

Laura felt that at the core of everything the whole message was painfully simple: As long as she kept her legs closed till marriage and obeyed her mother consistently enough to where things didn't get out of hand, Laura's mother would be satisfied (and maybe not pester her to death). But in the summer, the latter would become more difficult to abide by; Laura was wild in the summer. The forest was her home. The trees and birds her musical friends, the swishing of the leaves and sing song tunes produced from high above her led her to dance further into the wilderness. Many days Laura would prance back onto the property just as dusk was beginning to fall, flowers woven in her hair and mud slinging on her skirts. Jane was annoyed, to say the very least.

In this, Jane felt threatened by the possible replication of her own youth as she observed Laura's development. The girl's wild heart had not materialized out of nowhere; Jane lived fast. Once upon a time, Jane had emotions that directed her course as sporadically as a ship in full sail left to its own devices. She married young, blinded by love and promise of a life empty of the constraints a young Englishwoman born and bred in the aristocracy of the colonies was expected to adhere to. Having cut ties with her immediate family and marrying a husband orphaned at a young age, Jane may have been "free," but with no money to make do with it seemed to be all in vain. Jane would do anything to ensure Laura not suffer the same fate, no matter how disagreeable she came off to her daughter.

As the years accumulated, Jane formed a plan of action to curb her daughter's path once she came of age. To state it simply: Laura was to become a perfect lady, raised as so as much as was possible given the family's limited financial situation. No tea or dance lessons, of course; That was something Jane would be tasked to instill manually to the best of her ability. Self-control, a virtue made of steel, manners and conversation of every proper kind honed into the sharpest delicacy you ever did see. God was going to be the governor of Laura's very being. A good Christian woman, A lady, the things Jane let go. The existence she could have maintained. The whore's life she could have escaped.

A person with half a brain could easily see how Jane was fixing to live vicariously through her daughter; Though, she was only fixing at this point.

Laura was not a young woman easily swayed.