Total pages in book: 61
Estimated words: 60309 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 302(@200wpm)___ 241(@250wpm)___ 201(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 60309 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 302(@200wpm)___ 241(@250wpm)___ 201(@300wpm)
“So, so, soooo much,” Daisy chimes in.
“It’s an awfully big adventure,” Winona says dreamily to her mom. “You can’t deny us that, can you?”
Ryke grunts out a noise that I don’t try to translate.
“You all have like five more years with us,” Kinney pipes in. “You can survive.”
“We didn’t say we couldn’t,” Lo refutes. “And I agree with your mom and aunt, I’d miss you too much.”
Kinney tries to steel her eyes.
Winona probably senses they’re losing Kinney so she rushes to the next slide “Annnd to our fifth reason.” This time the slide folds into the next one.
REASON 5: WE’LL STAY OUT OF TROUBLE. WE HAVE BODYGUARDS TO KEEP US SAFE.
“We promise to stay out of trouble,” Winona says strongly. “I’m so serious about this.”
“We’ll be in bed by curfew,” Audrey adds.
“We won’t go out late if the older kids want to.” Kinney is glaring while she’s talking now. “We promise. We’re not Luna, Eliot, and Tom. We don’t break rules just to break them.”
“But you are your own brand of trouble, little Slytherin,” Lo says.
Kinney shakes her head. “Dad. Please. I want to be with Moffy. What if he needs a sibling right now?”
Lily whispers something in Lo’s ear.
“What’s the last point?” I ask.
“I’m glad you asked, Uncle Connor.” Winona clicks the remote, and the slide makes a mosaic into the next.
REASON 6: YOU LOVE US DEARLY. YOU WANT US TO BE HAPPY.
I smile, knowing my daughter made this absurd slide.
Rose is also smiling. “Pulling at our heartstrings?”
“Do you have any of those left, Cruella?” Lo asks.
“None left for you,” Rose snaps.
“Thank God.”
I give Lo a look.
“Thank Connor.” He winks at me.
I grin.
“I love you, Nona,” Ryke tells his daughter, “and that’s why this is a hard fucking no.”
“Sorry, Nona,” Daisy says with a wince. “But it’s not a good idea. I’m in agreement on the hard fucking no.”
“Noooo,” Winona holds up her hands, her face shattered. “You have to at least discuss it. You have to talk with each other. Take like an hour. Or two!” Desperation is in the creases of her eyes.
“There’s nothing to discuss,” Ryke says firmly. “You’re thirteen. You’re not going on a tour bus with a bunch of twentysomethings. You’re just fucking not.”
“We did all of this,” Kinney points to the presentation just as the music stops playing. It layers on the tension in the room. “At least give us something and talk. Like Nona said, just…take a second?”
“Or thirty-minutes,” Winona tries, her face losing color with defeat. “Mom, it’d mean a waffle-lot.”
Daisy is crumbling. “…talking about it wouldn’t hurt.”
Audrey looks to me. “Please?” And it’s Audrey’s utter doe eyes that do me in.
“One minute,” I say and stand up. I head over to Lily and Lo’s seats. Ryke and Daisy follow from the back. The six of us form our own huddle.
“It’s a no, right?” Lily asks.
“Definitely,” Rose says. “I’d rather send her off to Faust Boarding School full of boys than on that tour bus. And that’s saying something because the idea of having her around those egotistical neanderthals makes me want to vomit.”
I don’t want to imagine her at Faust surrounded by only male students.
“You hear that, Connor?” Lo asks me. “You’re a neanderthal.”
Rose rolls her eyes. “He’s the exception.”
“I’m her exception,” I gloat.
Rose groans. “Stop.”
“You said it, darling, not me.”
“Ugh,” she grimaces. “Can we get back to the topic?”
“Mom would’ve let me go,” Daisy suddenly says to her sisters. “A tour bus full of adults with the possibility of being publicized in magazines, especially if it was for modeling—she would’ve let me go at thirteen. I think she would’ve let me go at twelve.”
The air deadens.
Lily wears a deep frown.
Rose solidifies, her eyes burning. “We are not taking a page out of Samantha Calloway’s parenting handbook. Never.” Rose has always brandished the anti-Samantha handbook where our children are concerned, and in this instance, I know Daisy would want to do the same.
“The answer is fucking no,” Ryke says. “We’ve all agreed. What else is there to talk about?”
“Maybe we should say some nice things about the presentation?” Lily says. “They did work hard on it.”
“I agree,” Daisy says with a big breath, possibly trying to let go of the past. Ryke has an arm around his wife. “Let’s put some positivity into the air. I think the music was a nice touch.”
“The music wasn’t what I would choose, but it was okay,” Lo admits.
Ryke thinks for a second before saying. “It was fucking brave of them to present that to us.”
“I agree with Ryke,” I say. “It was brave.”
Everyone looks at me like I’ve lost my mind by agreeing with him. Ryke looks skeptical. So I add, “Brave because it had all the makings of a project created at the very last minute.”
Ryke nods. “There it is.”
Rose says, “I love how they came together as a unit to fight for something they wanted. It’s very sweet, even if it’s a failure.”