Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 69847 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 349(@200wpm)___ 279(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69847 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 349(@200wpm)___ 279(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
I had no doubt the woman in front of me was afraid of heights. No, afraid would be too calm of a word. Terrified. Unaltered fear.
Even though she hadn’t said it, she definitely was showing signs of panic.
“You said this one didn’t have a drop!” she said accusingly to the woman beside her.
Hades. Hermes. Something.
It was an odd name that I definitely couldn’t nail down.
Then again, all the circus sisters had weird names.
Now the woman currently freaking out in front of me? I definitely knew her name.
Caristonia. Though everyone called her Tony.
“I did no such thing!” Hades/Hermes said.
“Hades, you lying cow,” Caristonia grumbled. “You damn well knew this was a drop one.”
Hades was snickering now.
The name was obviously fitting.
“I’m sorry.” She wiped her eyes. “But you should see your face right now.”
Caristonia flipped her off, then started marching back down the stairs.
“If you go down to the second level, there’s another water slide that is much smaller than this one,” Hades called to her. “They even let the babies ride it.”
Caristonia barged past us, then paused right beside Briley.
My daughter looked up at the woman and said, “I’ll hold your hand and go to the other one with you if you want.”
Caristonia wilted slightly. “Thank you, dear heart, but I can’t allow you to stoop to my level. Be brave and go on this one.”
She moved past us in her hideous one-piece swimsuit and marched down the stairs with anger in every step.
“She’s going to murder you one day,” Keene, the ladies’ we were currently with brother, said. “Like no joke, Hades. You knew she wouldn’t like it. Her fear of heights isn’t something new. You need to stop being such a jerk all the time.”
“You let her come up here, too,” Hades pointed out.
“I thought she was working through her fears. Not being lied to. You know she would’ve been catatonic the rest of the day if you let her go on it,” Keene argued.
Catatonic?
What?
I looked back toward the stairs thinking someone should warn her that the slide she’d gone down two levels to was just as bad, but I could no longer see her at all.
The line moved, and I was forced to go forward, getting my first good look at the slide that Caristonia had fled from.
It was pretty gnarly looking.
“Wow,” Briley breathed. “That’s intense.”
“It is,” I confirmed. “You’re sure you want to go on this one?”
“I’m sure,” she promised.
That was my daughter.
A literal badass. Nothing scared her. Not heights. Not airplanes. Not arenas. Not loud crowds. Not anything.
Hell, not even me.
“I think her sisters are mean to her,” my daughter whispered. “I’m kind of glad I have no other siblings.”
I wanted to laugh at the statement, but I somewhat agreed with her observation.
I was A, also glad she didn’t have any siblings, and B, agreed that Caristonia’s siblings were rather mean to her.
Then again, maybe that was what siblings did to each other? I didn’t know.
My sister, Rain, and I were nice to each other. Well, after we’d grown up, we were nice to each other. When we were younger? Yeah, it’d been on like Donkey Kong. But now that we were both mature adults? Let’s just say that other than fighting over whose Easter basket was whose on Easter—I mean the one with the massive amounts of Reese’s Eggs was always the more desirable Easter basket—we didn’t fight much at all.
Now the Circus Sisters as I’d dubbed them in my head?
They’d done nothing but fight.
Even traumatized from last night, the pregnant sister, Simi, hadn’t been spared from the ribbing.
Though, that might’ve been a survival instinct.
They’d all been very scared last night for their sister, and it’d shown on every one of their faces.
Especially Caristonia’s.
“Oh, Dad,” Briley whispered. “Do you think she can hear me?”
I looked down over the edge to where she was pointing with her finger to see the object of my thoughts on her butt in the middle of a blue water slide, her hands on the railing.
She was doing this shimmy shake thing as a lifeguard talked to her at the top of the slide above her head.
He gestured to her with his hand to lay flat, and I realized that due to the water pressure around her, it was likely she couldn’t hear anything even he was saying. Let alone what we were saying.
“No,” I told her. “She likely can’t even hear what the lifeguard is saying. He’s having to use hand signals, see?”
Briley nodded, looking worried and sick.
That was my Briley girl.
Always thinking about everyone and wanting everyone to be happy.
She was a kind soul that I’m not sure should’ve been blessed with parents like me and Abilene, but I was so glad that she’d been given to us.
Well, to me.
Abilene, Briley’s mother, hadn’t wanted much to do with her from the moment she was born.