My mother died on September 9, 1910. I was nine, and it was the worst day of my life. A sudden heart attack, they said. The same thing that killed my aunt the summer before. The same thing that killed my sister before she even turned one.
The same thing that would kill me.
Many women in the Turner side of my family were born with an abnormal heart. It beat funny, like it was just a pace slower than a normal heart. There were exceptions, of course. My cousins, twins, hadn't had it. My grandmother lived to be seventy-seven with a perfectly healthy heart.
I was born with it though, and on the day my mother died, I decided that I would never have children. I would never put them through this. As I got older, I was afraid to even get close to someone. I would die young, I knew it. Why would I hurt someone like that?
Of course, that was all before I met Atticus Finch.
Okay, so that was just supposed to be a little introduction. Others will be longer, I promise!
Oh, and yeah, I know people think that Scout and Jem's mother's name is Louise, but technically it wasn't mentioned anywhere in the book, and I don't really care for the name, so I went with Margaret...