Total pages in book: 25
Estimated words: 23676 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 118(@200wpm)___ 95(@250wpm)___ 79(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 23676 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 118(@200wpm)___ 95(@250wpm)___ 79(@300wpm)
I throw my hands up in disbelief. “Do you think dysentery is something that you catch out in the boonies, Mom?”
“Yes? They vaccinate for it in civilized places. Keeps it from spreading.”
I stare at her. I want to scream at her it’s something you can’t vaccinate for. That it’s not contagious.
It’s all irrelevant. She probably knows this. She just thinks I’m stupid and will accept whatever she says as an excuse to get me to leave.
“Let’s go, Lavender. I thought we could relax out here, but clearly not. You need to come back home with us. You should be preparing for grad school instead of wasting your time out here.”
“I’ve wasted no time out here, Mom. I’m not going anywhere.”
“You can’t be doing anything productive here. There’s nothing to do out here that's worth anything.”
“I’m learning how to be a baker.”
“A baker?” She cackles loudly. “Did you hear her, Brad? Our daughter—a baker. How terrible, as parents, would we be if we allowed her to do something so lowly?”
My father is completely shut down. He spent most of the time here just staring out the window, enjoying the view that my mother pretends doesn’t exist. “Yeah, sure, dear. I’ll call back Matt Baker about the merger.”
She rolls her eyes, and ignores his disinterest. “Stop the charade, Lavender. Stop this teenage rebellion. You have a duty to us. Fill your role, your purpose.”
“I’m twenty-one, Mom. This isn’t teenage rebellion anymore. This is like... young-adult rebellion?”
The situation is already pretty bad.
I didn’t know that it could get a whole lot worse.
“Lavender,” a deep, sweet voice announces as he throws open the front door.
Hawk. His heavy footsteps ring against the wood floor, and he sees my parents for the first time.
I stare at him. I’m always pleased to see him, but he’s the spark in the powder keg at this moment. “Hawk, I told you to leave. You can’t be here right now.”
My mother sees my beau, and is taken aback. “This? Is this what you’re defying us for?”
“No, Mother. I want to be here for more than just a boy.”
“Hi?” Hawk says as she approaches.
“You’re the lowlife seducing my daughter, aren’t you? Filling her head with rebellion and thoughts that being a baker is a worthy place for a woman of her status?”
“No? She wanted to do that before I even met her.”
“Sure she did. My sweet, innocent angel just randomly decides to come to the middle of nowhere and start working at your bakery on a whim. I see exactly what’s happening.”
“I... I don’t own a bakery?”
“You don’t even own your own business? This is worse than I could have ever imagined.”
“Mom, no. Hawk has nothing to do with why I’m here. I came up here before I even met him.”
“Don’t you lie to me, Lavender. You met this disgraceful piece of white trash on the internet. He whispered sweet nothings in your ear, and you spent our money to come up here to see him. I bet you aren’t even using protection!” She shudders. “Imagining a waste of flesh like you in my family tree. It’s a travesty!”
“I swear on my family’s honor I’ve done no such thing.”
“Your family has no honor to swear on!”
“Mom, shut up!” I scream, having enough of this. “I didn’t come up here for him. I came up here because I heard the views were beautiful. I took a job at a bakery because I wanted to learn how to be a baker, and you’d never let me enroll in a proper baking school. I did all this for me, Mom. All for me. Don’t you dare insult Hawk over this. Me finding him was by happenstance, and it’s the best happenstance to ever happen to me.”
My mother is seething. She stomps over to me and tries to stare me down. We’re about the same height now, my natural growth finally catching up to me, so she can’t try to intimidate me like that anymore. “You are a child.”
“I’m twenty-one. An adult. I can make my own decisions. My own mistakes.”
“Not as long as we are funding your life, Lavender. We’re taking care of you. You’re a child. You can’t do anything without us.”
She’s right about that. I have nothing without them. No money. No connections.
“If you want to be so adult, I want you to think this through, then, little girl. Your father and I? We’re leaving. If we don’t see you back home by the first of next month? I’m writing you out of the will. I’m freezing your bank account. I’m canceling all of your credit cards. You won’t even have a phone plan without me, Lavender. If you want to be an adult so bad, you go be an adult. No more of the love and care we’ve shown you. You can have the freedom to go die naked in the streets for all I care.”