Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 114211 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 571(@200wpm)___ 457(@250wpm)___ 381(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 114211 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 571(@200wpm)___ 457(@250wpm)___ 381(@300wpm)
“I’m sure you do plenty,” I mumble, flipping pages so fast, I’m afraid I’ll tear them.
Suddenly her cool hands cover mine, stopping me.
I look up. “What?”
She rubs my hands. “Sweetheart, you’ve been … touchy lately. Is there a reason? You wanna talk about it, maybe?”
My face wrinkles up, prepared to spit some kind of annoyed remark back at her. The next instant, I drop my eyes to the desk. “I’m just goin’ through something.”
“You haven’t been drinking as much.”
I meet her eyes. “Huh?”
“I noticed. Don’t smell any alcohol on you. And your clothes look like you actually washed and ironed them.” She chuckles to herself as she eyeballs my outfit approvingly. “I like some of the changes I’m seein’, though I can understand if it’s a bit hard.”
“What do you mean?”
“You were gettin’ nice n’ close with that young man from out of town, weren’t you?”
And now I’m choking. “What? I … What’d you hear? Huh?”
“Oh, it ain’t no secret, Anthony. Why are you acting like it’s a secret? You two looked so cute together, you and that young man. I saw you out and about one morning a week or two ago with him, jogging around. Dad and I were at the market and saw you.”
“But how does—?” I feel like I’m literally crawling out of my skin trying to form a damned response. “How does me out joggin’ lead to … to thinkin’ I’m keepin’ some big secret from you?”
“Oh, I’ve guessed about it for a while now, ever since the thing that happened between you and Jimmy and Bobby at the movie theater however many years ago. I just had it in my heart and kept it all to myself. Mother’s intuition,” she says with a gentle pat over her heart. “And after seein’ you out with that guy, I just knew, you had found someone to make you happy at last.”
I’ve fallen back, leaning fully on the desk. I wasn’t counting on this conversation occurring today. Or ever. And certainly not in my dad’s musty office filled with binders that are older than I am.
Her cool, soft hand touches my cheek, drawing my eyes back to hers. “And now all of these changes I’m seein’ in you …? I’m so proud of you, sweetheart.” She smiles. “He must be a really good one, that guy.” Her smile breaks. “But now he’s gone back home? Back to wherever he came from? That must be why you’re so sad.”
“I ain’t sad. I’m just …” I drop my eyes back to the desk again. “I’m just … I’m just tryin’ to stay focused is all.”
“Focused on helping out your daddy with the business?”
I sigh at the binders covering the desk. “He don’t even keep proper protocols in here.”
“Protocols? Oh, that nonsense is over here,” she says, letting go of my cheek to fetch a bright orange binder off a shelf, bringing it to the desk. “Protocols out the wazoo. What’s the pest?”
“Opossum.”
She looks at me. “Ohh, now those aren’t really pests, per se …”
“I know. I told Mrs. Pane that, but then she got all fussy about it, and now I’m lookin’ up to see if we even do anything, or if we just call animal control out from Fairview, if there’s a checklist I gotta go through before—”
“Oh, those Panes. Now is the sweet n’ loving opossum causin’ any damage to her property?”
“No.”
“Goin’ through their trash? Livin’ out of their attic?”
“Nope, and nope.”
She sighs. “You know what? I’ll go and talk to her. This sort of thing just needs some direct conversation, woman to woman, and we’ll figure it out, no problem at all.”
“What’s no problem at all?” comes my dad’s voice.
We turn to find him there at the door, hands on his hips, eyes zeroed in on us like we have no business in this room.
Instead of answering his question, I poke a finger at the stack of binders on his desk. “Dad, I dunno how to say it any other way, so I’m just gonna say it how I want, it ain’t 1995. Why is everything written or typed out in these binders like someone’s studyin’ for an exam? You need this in a computer. All a’ this.” I start putting them away one by one back onto the shelves. “And if I might be so bold as to suggest … we need a damned website.”
“We?” He folds his arms and chuckles. “Now our business is a ‘we’? Our family business?”
“Rupert, he’s trying,” murmurs my mom quietly.
“I can see that. I’m not mad about it,” he grunts despite his tone of voice. He comes in and stops by the desk, watching me continue to file away his clunky binders. “So you think we need a website, huh? Is that Anthony’s big opinion?”
“It’s called movin’ into the next century, and it ain’t some big innovative idea. It’s just obvious. Everything’s online. If we wanna grow our presence n’ compete with the big companies in Fairview, we’ve gotta do more than just shove flyers at people. We can make a social media presence. Expand. Maybe take some business from Fairview, too. I ain’t afraid of ‘em.”