Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 71110 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 356(@200wpm)___ 284(@250wpm)___ 237(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71110 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 356(@200wpm)___ 284(@250wpm)___ 237(@300wpm)
She hustled them out the door.
“I wanted to show you I don’t need a babysitter.”
Daphne dragged her keys out of her bag. “How many days have you come home alone?”
Lou followed her. “Four. And you didn’t even notice.”
She hadn’t noticed because she always called Lou’s cell to let her know she was in the parking garage. Mrs. Callahan lived on the nineteenth floor and all the way on the other side of the building. Oftentimes Daphne was dragging home a project to work on, and it was far easier to let Lou meet her at the apartment. After all, she was twelve, and she had a key. What could happen to her in an elevator that had security cameras?
“Yeah, well, I assure you, I’ll notice everything now because I won’t let you alone for a single second.” She opened the door and ushered her daughter in. “You’re grounded. Forever. You will be lucky to see the light of day by your eighteenth birthday.”
“I don’t like Mrs. Callahan. She’s boring, and all she does is watch the news and make me do my homework.”
“She sounds perfect to me then.”
“But I get my homework done fast. She won’t even let me read a book. I’m not allowed to watch TV on my phone, and her version of a snack is celery sticks, and I hate celery sticks,” Lou argued. “I want to be like you when you were a kid. You got to come home and watch TV and have a cookie.”
Yes, because latchkey kid was something to aspire to be. “Both my parents worked, and they didn’t have the time or money to make sure I was properly taken care of.”
“So you learned how to take care of yourself.”
Daphne shook her head. “It wasn’t like that. It was hard.” And it could be fun. There had been a certain freedom to those afternoons, and she’d used it to get into trouble she didn’t want her daughter to deal with. “And the world was a different place then.”
“No, it wasn’t. I looked it up. In the year you turned twelve there were 1,332 murders in the state. The most recent statistics show there were 1,409 but the state added 7.6 million to the population in the years in between, so technically the murder rate has gone down,” Lou announced. “The difference is the twenty-four-hour news cycle.”
This was what happened when you tried to raise a genius-level kid on a slightly gifted IQ. Lou had come out of the womb playing chess not checkers. “Go to your room. I can’t even with you right now. I have to figure out when Mrs. Callahan is coming back and how long I’ll have to reconfigure my schedule.”
“I don’t like Mrs. Callahan,” Lou insisted. “I did great on my own. I didn’t start any fires, and I got my homework done. It was nice to be alone for once, Mom. Please. She tells me all the time that I should try to be prettier and people would like me more. She tells me I don’t smile enough.”
Daphne sighed. “She’s from a different generation.” And one that wasn’t going to change. She was so tired. Mrs. Callahan worked because she was cheap and had tons of spare time on her hands. “Go to your room. I need to think about the situation. I meant what I said, though. You’re grounded. You can’t lie to me like this.”
“But sometimes I need to show you things are okay before you’ll try them,” Lou argued. “Momma, you’re scared all the time. You need to see that it’s going to be okay.”
She couldn’t do this right now. She was going to lose it, and she’d promised herself she wouldn’t do that. Not in front of Lou. She was the mom. Lou didn’t need to watch her mom break down. “Go to your room.”
Lou sighed. “I’m sorry, but I’m also not. I did a good job. When I thought I was in danger, I found someone to help me. I didn’t go to Grandmother because we both know she would hold it over your head. And you can’t redo your schedule because you have three wedding cakes to make and you’re providing the desserts for the mayor’s fundraiser. I know you think it’s weird, but Boomer and MaeBe are right next door. Why not let me hang out with them?”
“We don’t know them. And I know they seem nice, but they can’t possibly want to babysit you. It doesn’t mean you’re not awesome. It simply means people don’t do things for nothing. They have to get something out of it.” She hated it, but that was the way of the world, and men who looked like Boomer didn’t do things out of the kindness of their hearts.
“I don’t think so. They’re nice. They seemed like they like to help, and I wasn’t trouble,” Lou insisted.