AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Chapter Ten
BRIGGS
"Mom!" Millie's voicecarries up the stairs, her tone of impatience rivaling a full-blown teenager. "We're going to be late."
I roll over in bed and tap my phone. It’s ten after nine. We’re hardly going to be late for an eleven am practice. Amusement washes over me as I stretch my body and yawn loudly when a ping on my phone takes my attention.
An email to my personal account from my assistant with the subject: Should I be concerned?
I opened it quickly and skimmed her words.
Hey Briggs,
I've been able to clean up most of your inbox. It's safe for you to get back in there! J
But there's one email address that's been sending multiple emails a day chronicling how they are going to find out who you are.
Should I be concerned?
There's no indication they are even close to figuring it out.
Thanks,
Leslie
Nasty emails of upset customers demanding to know who I am aren’t new. I’m accused of hiding behind Instagram because I know I make a shitty product. Or they say I must be too fat or too ugly to show my face, as if that's the worst thing a woman can be. That I can only be successful or strong or smart if I’m also thin and conventionally beautiful.
Fuck convention.
I toss my phone on the bedside table and call for Millie.
"Get up here, kiddo!" I holler and hear her shoes on the wood steps like an elephant marching. She appears in my doorway with a mouth full of banana, her baseball cap on backward and bright purple neon leggings under a loose and faded t-shirt. Her hair isn’t braided yet and waves stick out in all directions under the cap.
"Wha?" she sat with sticky banana in her teeth. I wave her over to my bed and she sets the peel on the nightstand before climbing into bed with me. I wrap her up in my arms and know that these days are numbered—her willingness to cuddle with me, even her ability to cuddle with me. She's already almost my height.
She'll be tall like her dad. My heart kicks up at the thought. A strange mix of being happy for Millie to get to know her father and sad for me because now I have to share this girl I’ve spent every moment with since the day she was born.
"You still want to go?" I ask and she tilts her chin to frown at me. A little laugh escapes my throat and I kiss her forehead. "Okay then. I'll get up. But we still have like two hours, so don't rush me."
I purse my lips with a teasing raise of my brow. She knows I don't function until my third cup of coffee, and now she’s going get to see that her need for order, control, and stability comes from the other half of her DNA.
Millie jumps up, forgetting her banana peel and stops in the door, her grin playful. "An hour and a half."
She giggles and scoots from the room when I throw a pillow at her.
#
Thekeys jingled as I flip them in my palm, standing by the front door with a travel mug full of coffee, and a belly full of toast. After all her 'we're late' talk, she can't find her baseball glove.
"Did you check the treehouse?" I ask, glancing at the clock. We need to leave within five minutes if we were going to make the twenty-minute drive into town.
"Yes!" Her exasperated voice rushes around the corner and I narrow my focus in on her, the mom instinct rearing.
"Attitude, please." I set down my coffee and join her in the search for the glove. She’s frantically rushing around yanking pillows off couches and zigzagging through the room. I stroll calmly through the living room and kitchen to open the back door. As I scan the yard and deck, the soft brown leather catches my eye immediately.
Good Lord, did she even use her eyes?
I snap it up and pause in the doorway feeling little prickles along my neck, like the other night. The air was calm, the mountains sturdy, the trees silent. It’s the silent trees that send shivers along my spine. When the trees go quiet, the songbirds stop singing and the squirrels stop scampering, and the leaves stop rustling with life. That's when you know you aren’t alone.
