Total pages in book: 130
Estimated words: 121054 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 605(@200wpm)___ 484(@250wpm)___ 404(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 121054 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 605(@200wpm)___ 484(@250wpm)___ 404(@300wpm)
I sniffled and curled closer to Neil, and he stroked my hair against my back. Softly, he asked, “Is there anything I can do for you?”
“Just hold me,” I murmured against his skin.
“All night,” he vowed. “Or at least until my arms fall asleep.”
I wanted to cry. Really just cry my heart out. Maybe it was because I was so relieved that Mom was safe, but I couldn’t. I just lay there, tired from being woken up and exhausted by the shock, listening to Neil’s deep, slow breathing beneath my ear, and circling my fingertips along his side.
“I hope it doesn’t bother you to hear it, but I have never truly recognized how hard some people’s lives are. Look at your mother’s position. She’s just lost everything. What if she didn’t have the resources a wealthy daughter could provide?”
“Then…she would live with my grandma. Or be homeless.” Had he never thought about this stuff before? “And what do you mean, you never realized how hard people’s lives were? You give to charities and stuff for starving children and land mine victims and clean water initiatives. Did you just go, ‘oh, that sounds like a good way to get rid of some money?’ That doesn’t seem like you.”
He adjusted his position a little, and I felt his discomfort in the shift of his body. “Well, it’s far easier to conceive of the hardships of people in developing nations. Going without vaccines or proper hospitals, clean water, things of that nature. I suppose I’ve never thought of what happens to the poor in America.”
I sat up and stared down at him through the darkness, my utter disbelief forming a knot of tears in my throat. “They keep on going, or they die, Neil.”
His indrawn breath was like a call to action. I could hear his resolve in the silence. When Neil is wrong about something, most of the time he’ll admit it. Unless it’s about something he believes I said or he never said, and we’re actively arguing about it.
“You would consider yourself as having grown up poor, then?” he asked.
“Not really. I mean, we didn’t have a lot of things. But we weren’t homeless. And we had food. Not always good food, but we had food.”
“And that’s the standard?” He reached for something on his nightstand. The soft glow of his iPad gave the air a bluish tint.
“What are you doing?” I asked, lying back down. Whatever small burst of crisis-induced adrenaline had been keeping me awake was wearing off fast. I had a feeling that the wheels in his head had just kicked into overdrive, or some other kind of car metaphor he might have used. “You’re not Googling ‘poor people’, are you?”
“Not at all.” But he set the iPad swiftly aside.
Whatever. If Neil wanted to get involved in charity closer to home, who was I to argue? Besides, if he focused on a new cause, he might stress less about Stephen’s book. It was a win-win.
* * * *
March was intent on going out like a lion. Despite our super high-tech insulated windows, some rooms of the house were blistering cold from the ridiculous winds of the sea. As close as we were to the ocean, we didn’t see as much snow as we did sleet and ice. The weather was so miserable it was going to threaten Neil’s birthday party. He seemed fine with that; after the huge party for his fiftieth, he was more than happy to stay at home and have a birthday cupcake on his fifty-first. But I’d already arranged a party and hired caterers. I didn’t want that effort to go to waste.
Maybe I should have been rooting for some kind of horrible winter storm to keep the party from happening. With my mother coming to stay with us, we needed everything to be way less complicated. Especially since we didn’t really know when she’d be leaving.
I was stressing out about her staying with us before she’d even arrived. That was probably a great sign.
“I’m begging you to rethink that cup of coffee,” Neil urged as I filled my travel mug. “You’re tense enough already.”
“Well, let’s see. My mom is coming to stay with us for the first time ever, and she totally hates you, so…” I fitted the lid tight and took a sip. “Oh, and she’s going to be here just in time for your birthday, which will really hammer home the age difference she’s such a fan of.”
“She doesn’t hate me,” Neil said, then, a little less confidently, “I wouldn’t say she hated me, would you?”
“You’re fifty years old and marrying her twenty-six year old daughter. That’s not something she’s going to just be over,” I reminded him.
“I just haven’t had time to grow on her.” He was sitting at the kitchen island, and he held out his empty coffee mug toward me. “Who could possibly resist my charming personality?”