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Marigold, who was nestled in the crook of his arm, started crying again.
“This is becoming a real trend with you, isn’t it?” Timber told her, reluctant affection coloring his voice. She looked like her mother. And she looked a bit like him too.
But she also looked like a small sack of potatoes sometimes.
She looked up at him, still crying. He lumbered to the table where he had prepared a bottle. He fed Marigold while he sat at his desk.
After she had finished the meal and seemingly sated her hunger or thirst, Timber set her down to sleep on his bed. He had been sleeping on the floor since her birth, too afraid that he would squash her in his sleep.
Then he went into the next room, which was his study. At his computer, he logged onto AmazingZon. The website that sold everything and anything.
The baby section overwhelmed him instantly. To be safe, he added two of everything to his cart and checked out.
“Five thousand dollars?” he murmured. Surely that number was wrong. But then he shrugged and continued with payment.
He hadn’t expected Marigold to be this expensive. But she was his daughter, and his heart bloomed at the sight of her.
Just then, a wailing cry came from the next room. Timber sighed.
“Daddy’s coming,” he hollered.
* * *
The delivery driverarrived two days later with everything he’d bought for Marigold.
She was crying when the driver arrived, and Timber blinked through sleep-crusted eyes as he signed for the delivery.
“You okay, buddy?” There was genuine concern in the driver’s voice. When Timber looked up at him, the driver smiled slightly.
“How do I get a baby to sleep all night?”
The driver laughed heartily as he hauled the items out of the back of his truck. “Babies, they don’t sleep at night, brother. You need to invest in a good coffee machine and a nanny.”
TWO
LYRA
“She might be right, but there is no way in hell I’m ever admitting it,” Lyra said to herself as she closed her laptop.
She looked at her phone, which had been buzzing all morning. The messages were mostly from her mother, inevitably calling and texting to find out whether Lyra had gotten a job yet. Lyra had been ignoring the messages for days but wouldn’t be able to much longer.
She didn’t need to hear her mother admonish her again for getting a degree majoring in English and Classical Literature. Because it turned out her mother had been right. And that was not something Lyra ever wanted to admit.
Finding a job had been nearly impossible ever since leaving school. Though she had found work as a temp at a local law firm, that wasn’t exactly what Lyra wanted to do. The only jobs available to someone with her degree involved teaching, and Lyra couldn’t face the thought of being in a lecture hall all day.
Her phone buzzed again, and she finally got up to scroll through the messages.
Damn,Lyra thought as she looked at her friend Alex’s message. This particular one described the girth of her latest boyfriend’s … member.
“Well, good for her,” Lyra declared as kindly and resolutely as she could. “She deserves a job that she loves and a boyfriend who can crack her back like a glowstick.”
But so do you,a stubborn voice spoke in the back of her mind.
The truth of the situation was that Lyra’s temp job would be coming to an end soon. It was, after all, temporary. And when that ended, she’d have to move out of her apartment and in with her mother, giving up the last bit of freedom she had.
She wasn't sure what she'd do if she didn’t find a job soon.
Lyra put the coffee pot on and scooped the last of her grounds into the filter just as a heavy thump sounded outside her front door. Her apartment had a view of the town, and her front door opened right onto the street. She left the coffee to do its thing, sighing as she walked to the front door.
