Total pages in book: 82
Estimated words: 76698 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 307(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76698 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 307(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
"What? Like you don't know who I am. I was the one to take you in to get your balls cut off," Miller declared loudly to be heard over the snarling. "Well, okay, fine. I can see why you are bitter about that, I guess. Call off your ball-less dogs," she yelled, making a small smile tug at my lips.
"Enough," I called, watching as their heads turned to me, almost disappointed that they had to sit and be quiet.
All through this, Captain stayed seated beside the rocking chair - and her - head lifted, ears up, alert, but determined to stay exactly where he was.
"I brought danishes," she told us, pulling a backpack off her shoulders, digging inside for the white bakery bag. "Cheese ones. Because fruit in desserts is disgusting. Now, excuse me for a second. I have to pee."
Miller was not what anyone would call high maintenance. Her job demanded she be adaptive to all kinds of living conditions. From luxury hotels to a hovel in the woods during a Russian winter.
But she had one rule.
She didn't pee outside.
Case closed.
Which meant the entire team eventually learned how to throw together a composting toilet on the fly.
"I need coffee," she called from the closed bathroom door. "After making me trek all the way in here, that is the least you can do. Well, that and tell me there are baby goats to play with."
"Coffee I can do. Too early for goats. Got two pregnant ones, though," I called back.
"So, what you're saying is I need to take another trip out in a month or two," she declared, moving into the kitchen with me. "She's almost catatonic," she mumbled, jerking her chin toward the front of the house where, I imagined, the rocking chair was still occupied.
"Told you she was off. What?" I asked, watching as her dark eyes went thoughtful.
"Dunno. Just interesting, I guess."
"What is?"
"The way trauma affects people. I wonder if she started remembering," she added, glancing over to me filling a pot with water to boil. "You know they make coffee machines now, right? Automatic. Keeps the coffee hot for hours. Or, you know, for your antisocial ass - single-serve machines."
"Bad for the environment."
"They do make reusable pods now, you know," she told me with an eye roll. "This way takes forever."
"You can wait five minutes for a cup of coffee. Sure you do it when you get coffee to go."
"Five minutes? In Navesink Bank?" She snorted at that. "You're lucky if you get out of She's Bean Around in half an hour some days. Though, an argument could be made for the frequent, out of the blue dance parties from the employees slowing down the service a bit."
"So what are you bitching about then?"
"Has she eaten?" she asked.
Miller was always an interesting conversationalist. She could veer off the main topic for forty minutes, filling the air with anecdotes and a healthy heaping of sarcasm, then just as suddenly jump around to the point once again. If you weren't used to it, it could give you whiplash.
"Little bits of things. She's small though."
"And you're probably giving her a mountain man portion. So long as something is going in. As soon as you're done making Little House on the Prairie coffee, we will go out and offer her a danish. I know you don't usually have anything sweet around here. And most girls I know have a sweet tooth. Especially when they're not feeling great. Hopefully, she will eat that up. She was drinking the coffee."
"Doesn't seem to perk her up at all," I mumbled, taking the pot off the stove, pouring it over the grounds.
"Coffee stopped perking me up when I was sixteen. But I'm assuming she doesn't take it black. So sugar and milk is at least some more calories. Do you think she'll take her medicine?"
"Maybe. If I put it down next to a meal or something. She doesn't eat when I'm around."
"I'm guessing you haven't gotten a look at the cut, right?"
"No. She hasn't been up much."
"It looked clean at the hospital. No redness or anything."
"Did she get bad news at the hospital?" I asked, not entirely sure it was my business to ask.
"She was, ah, not really there during the exam. Like she is now. Zoned out. She didn't seem to hear anything while I was still there. But maybe she asked after."
"So, that's a yes."
"It's a maybe? I don't know about her life. If she has a boyfriend or a fuck buddy or anything. There was activity, but they called in inconclusive."
I hadn't, for some reason, wondered about a man in her life. Someone waiting for her to come home, worried about her. Or, possibly, being part of why she was in the shape she was in. Had she trusted the wrong guy? Had he taken advantage of her?