Total pages in book: 254
Estimated words: 240032 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1200(@200wpm)___ 960(@250wpm)___ 800(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 240032 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1200(@200wpm)___ 960(@250wpm)___ 800(@300wpm)
The start of my heart breaking…. Stop, Nina.
Lifting my gaze to meet Henri’s, it took more effort than I ever would have imagined to keep the grief from my tone. “If he doesn’t want to go in or he starts crying….” I threatened as the tank of a man watched me for a moment, then turned toward the door and pushed it open, slipping inside.
I could have used a hug or another word of reassurance. Even a nudge, but all right. Fine.
I could do this.
I barely got a chance to see Henri crouch through the window before the puppy in my arms started trying to lunge out of them.
Here I was, on the verge of crying, feeling so guilty for leaving him, and he was ditching me?
I dropped to a squat just as he wiggled out of my grasp, darting through the mini door to get into the room, leaving me standing there with my mouth open. I could not believe him.
A little bit of jealousy and disappointment that he’d left me that fast—at the first opportunity!—made my heart hurt for maybe two seconds total. But the sound of his familiar, playful bark reversed it almost as quickly. This was what I wanted for him. To be happy. To have people other than just me and our occasional visits to Sienna and Matti’s.
I gulped.
My time of living apart, of being so solitary, was over—as long as we made it through the next three months.
Someone told me once that life was 10 percent of the things that happened in it, and 90 percent how you handled those things.
Now, I had to figure out how to handle this next chapter. If that had to be with my head held high, my heart open, and maybe a little teary-eyed, so be it. For Duncan, I’d manage.
Moving toward the door, I pushed it and went straight to stand beside Henri. He hadn’t gone very far into the brightly lit classroom with lots of windows. Scattered around it were small beings of various heights. Most of the kids were human, looking between the ages of big toddler and elementary-school sized. Agnes was greeting the teacher, and Duncan was sniffing a small boy who was already scratching his ears, grinning wide.
Very, very slowly, I released a long breath as the woman who Agnes had been by made her way over.
She was very nice; she shook my hand and assured me that Duncan was going to be just fine, or something like that. Everything went in one ear and out the other. She might have said I smelled like a stinky dumpster, and I would have had no idea because I was trying so hard not to cry that I gritted my teeth and nodded a lot.
I didn’t think I was fooling anybody because Henri patted my shoulder once halfway through whatever the teacher said.
I was leaving Duncan.
Everything was moving so fast.
In a daze, just as quickly as we’d come in, Henri shooed us out, and I tried to catch Duncan’s attention, but he was busy getting pet by a boy with large ears and pale green skin. My donut had his butt in the air, his tail was swishing back and forth, and the boy, who I assumed was an ogre, was smiling at him.
That meant he was fine, right? That he felt safe and confident and knew that I would never, ever leave him until he was an adult? I could not cry.
This might be the worst moment of my life.
Top five at least, and I’d lived through losing Matti’s mom and dad, who I had considered my second parents, and moving away from my own parents.
The door had barely closed behind us when Henri stopped, and I couldn’t find the strength in me to do anything else but do the same.
I scratched my upper lip.
Henri lowered his voice. “You can cry outside but not in front of him.”
I wasn’t technically in front of him, I wanted to argue, but I nodded, all jerky and just once. “He used to wail when I locked him out of the bathroom because he’d bite my underwear and try to take off running with them, and he just dropped me like a bad habit,” I told him, torn between laughing and tearing up.
There was a clear winner not even a second later. Shrugging my shoulder, I wiped my eye with it and sniffled. Then I did it again.
“It’s fine. I’m fine,” I tried to assure him. Then I waved my hand in front of the upper half of my face, but that didn’t do anything. “You don’t need to say anything. I’m not crying.”
Henri’s rugged face was neutral as he lifted his hand, set it on my shoulder, waited a second, and gave it a light squeeze. “He looks happy.”