Total pages in book: 21
Estimated words: 19329 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 97(@200wpm)___ 77(@250wpm)___ 64(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 19329 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 97(@200wpm)___ 77(@250wpm)___ 64(@300wpm)
She nods. “Yeah, she’ll be surprised but she’ll get it.”
“She’ll get it. She’ll get used to it. That you’re destined to be my wife, Dolly. And the mother of my children.”
“Children, huh? Now all of a sudden it’s plural?”
I laugh. “You think I’m going to stop fucking you after you give me one?”
She laughs. “Oh, we’re going to have a lot of fun, aren’t we?”
“We’re going to rebuild our ranch, Dolly. Build our family. Our life.”
She takes my hands in hers. “Our happily ever after.”
I can’t imagine a better story for us.
10
DOLLY
That night and everything it entailed was simply exhausting, in the best way possible. The physical aspect is pretty easy to understand, but that conversation in the truck with Angus was pretty tiring too. But it was valuable and important.
I slept like a log. Sadly, without Angus’s touch. We wanted to tell Annie first, but she was already in bed by the time we got inside. To avoid the chance of her stumbling upon us naked in one another’s arms, not to mention any number of suspicious moans that might be heard through the walls, we slept in our own bedrooms.
It’s noon when I get up. I feel bad that I missed my usual duty of making breakfast, but when I open the fridge, a plastic-wrapped plate is sitting there. Bacon, eggs, and sausage. It’s kind of burnt, but I smile. Given Annie wouldn’t have made such errors and Crockett would burn the house down if he tried to microwave something, I deduce that this is Angus’s handiwork. He mentioned last night that today he was going help his father with a business dealing for the ranch, so he didn’t have the chance to sleep in.
I nuke the breakfast, and enjoy it. Everything’s still pretty clean, so I’m feeling useless at the moment, not to mention bored in this ranch house all by myself.
I hit the shower, enjoy the hot water, get myself nice and clean, make sure to wash my hair too, trying to decide what fragrance would tickle Angus in just the right way. I giggle, realizing if I asked him that question, he’d probably just say he thought I was irresistible no matter what I smelled like, so I best just pick what I like. So that’s exactly what I do.
There’s a hammering on the front door as I step out of the shower. Oh crap. I rush to dry myself off and slip on a bathrobe before running to the door. “One moment please,” I shout on the way.
I open the door and am greeted with an awful sight.
My mother is standing there, arms crossed, staring me down. “Dolly Deborah Dean, you pack your stuff up and you come with me right now.”
“Mom? What on earth are you doing here?”
“I just told you. I came to get you, little girl. You’re coming to Seattle.”
I cross my arms right back at her. “Says who?”
“Says the mother who gave birth to you and raised you.”
“That doesn’t mean you own me, Mom.”
She forces her way past me into the Rowdy ranch house. Even she has enough decorum not to want to continue an argument on the doorstep. “It means you owe me though, dear daughter.”
“I don’t owe you anything, Mom.”
“Ungrateful. Even as I’m trying to help you by getting you out of this little nowhere town.”
I put my hands on my hips. “Yeah right, you already showed your hand, Mom. You just need me to come to Seattle to help you pay your rent.”
She gets real close to me. She has an inch or two in height over me, and she makes full use of it. “You just want to stay here and keep mooching off the Rowdys. They start charging you anything to live here yet?”
“No, because they’re kind and generous people.”
“And you’re exploiting them. So selfish, you won’t even help your own mother when she’s asking for it.”
I grit my teeth. I hate that I’m wondering if she has a point. Angus, Annie, Crockett, they’re all such sweet people who give so much. The more I see of them, the more I realize how foolish I was to think that Angus was being selfish in going off to college. It was his way of helping his family, because they mean the world to him.
“Just look at yourself, Dolly. It’s the middle of the day, and you’re just here combing your hair, without a care in the world for the rest of the day, for the rest of your life. I bet you’re just planning on sitting around until someone comes and just carries you through the rest of your life, aren’t you? Planning to con some nice man into supporting you, huh?”
She’s so good at this. Needling me relentlessly until I break down and give in to her. I know she’s just projecting her own insecurities onto me, and it still somehow works. I’m feeling like the selfish one, not wanting to help my poor old mother, despite knowing better.