Total pages in book: 129
Estimated words: 119935 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 600(@200wpm)___ 480(@250wpm)___ 400(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 119935 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 600(@200wpm)___ 480(@250wpm)___ 400(@300wpm)
That’s what she’d brought to him. That’s what she’d offered in that iron basket.
Nothing but purity, goodness, magnificence from the inside out. She trusted him, and he welcomed that. Yearned for it.
Fleetwood Mac’s, ‘Everywhere’ now drifted from the bathroom speakers.
He dunked the cloth back into the water and ran it slowly over her ears. He noticed how the locks around her hairline and temples were looser in texture, and as some of the moisture got on her temples, and the steaming water created a sheen on her face, he played with those tresses, twirled them around his fingers.
Her smile grew bigger, her white teeth showing and glowing.
“You style baby hairs now?” She chuckled real lazy like, her eyes moving under the lids.
“Baby hairs?” He picked up the bottle of Dove bath wash, squirted a dollop onto the cloth, and plunged it between the valley of her breasts.
“Yeah, that’s what we call them. Those little hairs you were playing with.” A bit of a drip from the tub faucet started again, then stopped. Plop! Plop…
“Oh… they have a specific name. Guess I learn something new every year.”
“It’s supposed to be ‘learn something new every day’.”
“As you told me earlier, I said what I said.”
She had a good giggle at that.
He continued to bathe her, while she drifted to some peaceful place—where he wanted her to be. Content. A space where she could quiet her mind.
“Jack…”
“Yeah.”
“I didn’t leave New York just because of what I explained to you downstairs.” She moved her foot slowly back and forth in the water, making it slosh and ripple. “My career was in shambles. No one wanted to talk to me anymore about my work. They wanted to discuss this Black Ice shit. It was all over the news.” She sucked her teeth. “All of that happened, but it wasn’t enough to make me run away. There was more to it.”
“Being a runner, I imagine, is occasionally necessary. A matter of survival. Regardless,” he said with a shrug, “if it’ll make you feel better to get it off your chest, then by all means, you have the floor.” He poured a bit more soap into the cloth and scrubbed her neck, then went slow and easy along the hollows of her collarbones.
“I figure I’ve come this far, made a fool of myself in the process… I might as well tell you the rest. Besides, I have to call that man back soon, or he’s going to tell Angelique about his little discovery.” She rolled her eyes and grunted.
Oh, don’t you worry about him…
“So, as I was saying, Jack, due to the allegations, my mother was under investigation.”
“Well, the situation ballooned fast, now didn’t it?”
“That’s putting it mildly. Things like that are taken seriously, as I imagine they should be, and on top of it, there’s no statute of limitations for some of these charges.”
“When did all this start? The realization that your adoption wasn’t on the up and up?”
“A bit over nine months ago, but things got real nasty about six months ago. That’s when it really hit the fan. My father had just died, and we had a couple of local reporters and people coming around because it was a tragic boating accident. They didn’t find my father’s body in the river until 3 days later. Then, the reporters started coming around for this. The same damn news crews and more—triple the amount. Calls and emails all day and night. It was surreal. My mother was already depressed and grieving my father. He was the love of her life.”
She took a ragged breath. Her chest began to rise and fall faster with each inhale and exhale. “She is going to lose her license to practice law if they find her guilty of knowing that my adoption was done under false pretenses, and illegal paperwork was conscripted. I don’t know if she knew right away, but she definitely found out at least at some point afterwards. She faces all kinds of fines, penalties, even possible prison time. I’m an adult, as you said, but when this first began to unravel, I felt…” He could tell she was suppressing tears. And fears. “I felt like a little child… a hopeless, helpless child.”
“What was the final straw? The thing that made you buy that plane ticket and enter my world?”
“It wasn’t one action or incident, per se. It was everything. Well, I take that back. There was another situation I refused to be a part of. Another lie. Jack, I left because I hated her.” He nodded in understanding. “However, I decided to leave more because… because, I love her…”
Time passed like the droplets of water dripping from the gold faucet. The silence was loud, tight and heavy. Brief as it was, it represented the retrieval of one’s personal need for armistice. A moment of gathering oneself, of attempting to make sense of things.