✅ My Cousin's Keeper [NaNoWriMo 2021]

26. My Perfect Day

When Tess came back it was a quick rush back to the car, laughing on the inside at all the heads we turned along the way. I drove, which was a good choice because Ffrances was asleep before we even crossed the ring road. I thought to ask Tess if she wanted to be dropped off in Greater Ashfields or Raybridge before heading home, and she smiled like it was a pleasant surprise. She'd been messaging her friends, I was right, and they were all in town right now. They were going to watch another movie in the evening, and she wasn't sure if she wanted to go, but I told her that I really didn't mind. I was stuffed, so tonight's dinner would probably be something like a big platter of nachos to share in any case, and as long as I knew she was okay it would be no problem if she changed her mind at the last minute.

I dropped her off near the Ashfields Community Sports Centre, and headed home to put my girlfriend to bed. She hadn't woken up at all on the way back, so I tried to carry her inside without waking her. But it seemed that was a little way beyond my abilities, and she woke up enough to lean on my arm, mumbling sleepily as I guided her up the stairs to our bedroom.

I still had to check on the washing machine; where Tess's sheets were sporadically spinning. I thought long and hard about that. I didn't want to make her feel like I had invaded her privacy, or that I knew why she'd been washing them. She had tried so hard not to tell me, and it seemed only fair not to mention it after we'd had such a great morning together as a family. I closed the door in front of the machine, and did my best to pretend that I hadn't noticed it. The programme had already ended, so it wasn't that likely I would have heard occasional sporadic rotations to make sure air got to the sheets as they waited.

There were other things for me to do through the day, but eventually I changed back to more comfortable clothes and settled down in front of the TV to switch my mind off for a while.

* * *

When Tess finally arrived home, she seemed happier than ever. She had spent time with her friends, and it seemed that the whole day had been just what the doctor ordered for her. Good time spent with her friends, and good times with her family. She found me watching a TV show called Shaaark!, which she might have recognised from a few years before. The kid-friendly version of Cerberus Shark presented here was so very, very different from the incarnation in the latest movie; I could barely connect the dots between them, but there were occasional choices of phrase that made me believe that they were different versions of the same character.

Still filled with the leftover excitement from the morning, Tess was happy to join me for watching this one. And after a couple of episodes, the urge to watch just one more was becoming as powerful as it had been with Captain Kairo. We talked some more; speculating about the things we didn't know about the character; and I think we both knew that we would be asking Ffrances to teach us a little bit more about the characters that we didn't yet know. It was nearly three episodes in that I realised she had changed her clothes. She'd come home not wearing the fancy outfit I had offered her, but a simple T-shirt and beach shorts. She admitted that quickly enough; that she'd had a change of clothes in her handbag the whole time, carefully chosen to pack up as small as possible. She'd changed five minutes after I dropped her off, because the formal outfit still seemed a little too childish for her tastes. She hadn't wanted anyone to see her like that.

"You're more mature than me," I joked. "I would never have thought of that. Wouldn't know where to find a place to change in town. I do hope you're not pushing yourself too hard for the responsibility thing."

She smiled, and that was about all she had to say. As much as I knew she would have been cuter as the little girl she secretly wanted to be, I was really proud of her ability to impress a group of influential people, some of whom I might be working with in the near future. So I didn't say anything more about making her a baby, or anything else that could have made her feel guilty. We passed the rest of the evening without saying anything serious at all. When it came to bedtime, I wasn't sure whether I needed to worry about Tess or not. But in the end, I realised that she had been bright-eyed that morning, wide awake as soon as I saw her. That was an attitude I wanted to see more of, and I knew that she would be just as happy tomorrow if I could guarantee her a full night of uninterrupted sleep. It wouldn't be fair for her to miss out on it now, once she'd started depending on my help to get sufficient rest.

That evening was to be the last decent slice of quality time we could have for quite a while. I knew now that Claughton considered themselves patrons of the arts, and that they cared a great deal about what the public thought of them. But over the next week or so, I started to realise that even outside contractors needed to be driven and focused in order to earn the approval of their higher-ups. I needed to be thinking about work even when I wasn't working; and the contract was more involved than most. Perhaps it was because it was the first time I'd taken the lead on a project with such a large client, or perhaps it was because I really loved my work, and found it easy to get wrapped up in it when the project was an interesting one. But I soon found myself thinking about almost nothing but the job.

It was always good to come home and see my baby girl trying so hard to pretend she was an adult. I loved to see her smile when I did something to make her happy; like trying a new meal, or any little treat. And I loved the time I could spend with Ffrances and Tess, jumping in head first to a set of comics I'd never even heard of a month before. Ffrances was the best teacher I could imagine; and it was easy to remember the days when we'd first met. I was starting to get into the stories as well.

But somewhere in the back of my mind, as I enjoyed all of those moments, I was aware that there was something missing. Tess was supposed to be taking steps back towards being a baby, not tentatively reaching for adulthood. I wanted to make sure she got what she really wanted before it was too late, but I could never find the right time. It certainly didn't seem right to interrupt when she was helping me to study something that would make such a difference to my job, and that we were both starting to enjoy as well. So I put it off until the next day, and then the next. Day by day, I was just waiting for something to happen that would give me a reason to bring it up. Or for Tess to ask for help, or give me a sign that she was ready to be a real baby.