Total pages in book: 63
Estimated words: 60198 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 301(@200wpm)___ 241(@250wpm)___ 201(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 60198 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 301(@200wpm)___ 241(@250wpm)___ 201(@300wpm)
“Would you like some toaster strudel, young master?”
“Yes,” Connor says. “Assuming I get to use a knife with it. God! I’m not allowed to do anything!”
He’s immediately entered his obsession with weapons era, thanks to my mother’s influence. She knows exactly where to put pressure and it is making me extremely wary to know that she wants to be part of our world.
I yawn.
I’m so damn tired.
Karl ushers me back to bed with some electrolyte juice as a special treat, while the baby breakdances on my bladder.
CHAPTER 14
Ellie
Our baby is born in the spring. The birth is a relief in general, because it means the interior of my body stops being a gymnasium for the world’s most active infant. She emerges into the world fighting, and immediately punches the doctor.
Everybody laughs. Except me, because my insides are quickly becoming my outsides. Once my body stops being confused about where the various parts are supposed to be, I get to embrace and see my daughter for the first time.
She’s beautiful, with dark hair and dark eyes. She looks just like Karl with just a hint of me. I’m told that’s normal, that all babies look like their fathers when they are born.
She is immediately spoiled by her father, her three uncles, and me. We name her Yvie, and she is such a pure delight that I stop thinking about much of what has gone on before. The forest we used to live in still calls to me from time to time, but giving birth here has redefined my sense of home. I belong to a new place now. Yvie is the eldest child of the alpha of Louisiana. She is a princess, and she is treated as such.
I fall into motherhood and matehood, and looking after my baby, and months go by in which all is so intensely well I can barely stand it. It’s sickening, really. Karl is well settled into his new role. The leadership challenges have stopped with the birth of our daughter. It is amazing what a baby can do for a city, not just a family.
Yvie is down for her nap one afternoon when the front door opens in a disconcerting way.
A man steps through into the foyer. He has dark gray hair and he’s very tall and his features have a certain familiarity to them. He walks in like he owns the place, which immediately irritates me. Sometimes Karl’s henchmen do that. He doesn’t like it when I call them henchmen. I don’t like it when they hench.
“Can I help you?” I ask the question with a good amount of salt in my voice.
He glances at me briefly, in the way men do when they think you are irrelevant, and though it has been months since my last violent impulse, I suddenly have the almost uncontainable urge to rip his throat out.
He tries to walk further in, but I block his path.
“Who are you?” I ask the question with even more obvious annoyance.
“I own this house,” he growls. “Who are you?”
“That’s my daughter,” my mother says, pushing past him. “Ellie, this is Orion.”
Oh, great. She’s come traipsing back and she’s bought some aging bodyguard with her. Karl is going to be pissed.
Speaking of Karl being angry, Karl has come out of his office and is standing behind me, making an even more effective blockade for our uninvited guests.
“I thought I told you not to come back here,” he says, staring at my mother.
“You did tell me that,” she smiles. “So I went to Hawaii, found your father, who had tired of his then current wife and offspring, and convinced him to bring me back here to the home he owns. The home you have no right to tell me to leave now.”
“The fuck, Mom,” I exclaim.
She smiles even more broadly. She’s loving this. I have a sinking feeling in my stomach. I’m thinking of my youngest brother.
Connor is eleven years old now. He’s shot up about a foot since she last saw him. He’s been doing well in school, but I get the sense she’s about to derail all of that. I don’t want her here. I don’t want him here when she is here. She probably has a missile launcher in the back of the car for him.
“Hello, son,” Orion says. “It is good to see you.”
“Why are you here?” Karl is curt in his response. “Where are your wife and kids? Why are you with this creature?”
Orion looks taken aback. “My relationship ran its course. Margaret and I are together now. We are here because you just had a baby.”
“You came here to make our child related to itself?” I snap the question.
The two of us are very much on the back foot. We get hardly any sleep as it is, and neither one of us is prepared to receive family or enemies. These two feel like both. I realize I am carrying a bottle brush in one hand and my shirt has baby stuff on it.