Total pages in book: 58
Estimated words: 71015 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 355(@200wpm)___ 284(@250wpm)___ 237(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71015 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 355(@200wpm)___ 284(@250wpm)___ 237(@300wpm)
“Yes, of course you have to,” Reese said like I was a dumbass for even asking.
I sighed.
“Okay, well can she go in my neighborhood, or does it have to be yours?” I asked as I started putting away my multiple pairs of underwear, stopping at the red ones that I’d worn two days prior.
The last day I saw Grayson.
No, Torren. He’d asked me to call him Torren as he left. Again. But I knew him as Grayson. He’d always be Grayson to me.
“Yes, I’d rather you do it in my neighborhood. Rowen wants to see her friends one last time before we move next week,” Reese said sadly.
Reese had taken a new job in Kilgore as the school nurse.
They’d be moving within the next couple of weeks, and Rowen, as well as Reese, were having trouble adjusting.
Reese was a nurse at Christus Health on the cardiac floor, and had my mother watch Rowen when she was working. However, my mother was diagnosed with stage two breast cancer and little by little, her ability to watch Rowen had dwindled down until she was barely able to do it. The demands that chemo was having on her body were much more strenuous than she’d originally thought.
Plus it wasn’t good on my mother’s immune system to watch a little girl that was exposed to so many viruses.
So Reese had made the hard decision to move an hour away and start Rowen in daycare while she was working. Reese would now be able to get off in time to get Rowen, but she’d also be further away and not as able to help our mother out on her days off.
My mother, however, was one hell of a fighter, and with my father’s, sister’s, and my help, she’d get through it.
We just knew it.
“That’s fine. I don’t have anything to wear, though,” I said hesitantly.
I knew where it’d lead. She’d want me to wear her costume, and I was afraid to see what it was.
“You can wear mine,” she said just like I knew she would.
“Okay, but what were you going to be?” I worried.
Reese was also a size smaller than me. Although she was technically my big sister, she didn’t look like it. I was twenty eight where she was twenty nine. She, however, looked like she was my twin.
My skinny twin.
“I was going to be a spider while Rowe’s gonna be a ladybug,” she said sweetly.
I smiled. “Okay, I can do a spider.”
***
“Jesus Christ,” I hissed at my sister as she got ready for work. “I can’t be this spider.”
She turned and laughed at the expression on my face.
I was looking down at the skin tight black leggings, black long sleeved t-shirt with eight pink spider legs embroidered on it, and sighed.
“This is awful,” I said.
My thighs looked massive.
And I didn’t even want to think of my ass.
“Why couldn’t you do this again?” I asked.
“I have to work one more shift to be able to pay this rent and rent at my new place,” she explained patiently.
She’d explained it a few times now, and I still wasn’t understanding why she did it. She had enough money, it was just routine for her to save, since it’d been a reality for her before she graduated and started nursing school.
“Whatever. At least let me change my pants,” I pleaded.
“No, Tru, like me, like me!” Rowen cried loudly.
I sighed, completely defeated.
My, nearly, five year old niece had a way of doing that without even the least bit of coercion.
“You’re so going to pay me back for this. I swear to God, Reese,” I promised.
She rolled her eyes. “Whatever. I’ll be back in the morning. Make sure Rowen…”
I interrupted her. “You do realize, right, that I have Rowen at least once a week. Sometimes twice. I know everything there is to know about that child.”
She grinned unrepentantly. “You know, Tru, I really can’t wait for you to have a child of your own, and find out what it’s like to have something that means so much to you being out in the world with someone else while you’re working. I seriously cannot wait for the first time I watch your baby, and you call me five times a night.”
I glared at her. “Don’t jinx me, hoe.”
She guffawed. “You’d actually have to pull that stick out of your ass and go on a date before you can get pregnant. Or hell, even talk more than a sentence to a man.”
I pursed my lips and glared at the bitch. “Fuck off.”
“Language!” She snapped.
I flipped her off instead, really not wanting Rowen to say fuck, because then I’d never hear the end of it from Reese.
The woman was like a wildcat when it came to her kid, obviously. It was easier to let her have her way. You know, in case I desired my hair to be connected to my head, that is.
She was a vindictive bitch like that.
“All right, sweetie,” Reese said as she bent to Rowen who was busy coloring on the floor at our feet. “I’ve got to go. Have fun with Aunt Tru, okay?”
“Yes, mommy,” Rowen smiled.
Before Reese left, she turned around and pointed at me. “Five pieces of candy, tops.”
Pffft. Yeah, right.
***
“Just go knock on the door,” I told Rowen.
Rowen got out of the wagon I was using to pull her through the neighborhood and walked up to the house that had its light on.
I was with a couple of the other parents, and we watched as the girls walked up the winding path that led to the front door.
The house was pretty.
One of the better ones in the neighborhood. The only thing different about it was the bike that was parked up on the front porch.
The porch steps had a Jack O’ Lantern, and the front window was decorated with streamers of DO NOT ENTER tape.
I was minding my own business when the fake body that was lying on the lawn reached out and grabbed me by the leg.
Which is why, when my niece knocked on the door and walked in, I missed it.