✅ My Cousin's Keeper [NaNoWriMo 2021]

145. My Good Girl

I woke up early, with a smile on my face. I turned to see Ffrances, but there was only a space on that side of the bed. That was probably what had woken me; turning over in my sleep and finding a still-warm space in the bed where my love should have been. Of course, she was working an early shift today.

I lay back, wondering what to do with the day ahead. Until I remembered that there was a very good reason for me to be waking up early. Today was the day. I could show my family a movie that I was sure they would love, and earn the respect and obedience of my little girl at the same time. If everything went to plan, this would be the day to turn everything around. And that was when I properly remembered why I had wanted to wake up early. I needed to see Walthamstone again this morning, to make sure my little girls wouldn't be scarred by a momentary glimpse of the guy's dick when his costume let him down.

I jumped out of bed and hurried downstairs. I stopped in the middle, and stuck my head into the nursery on the way past. Tess had been up late last night, and I wanted to be sure that the kids hadn't decided to get together and do something stupid once they had no adult supervision. That was the same reason I'd treated each of them to half of one of the sleeping pills in their cocoa last night; to make sure there was no temptation for them to forget that they were just children after the romantic events of the ball.

Tess was still asleep. In her own bed, and wearing a wet diaper. I might have felt bad about that; but I knew that it would be easier for her to get a good night's sleep if she didn't have to wake to use the bathroom. Besides which, for a little kid there was a possibility of accidents anyway with just the sleeping pill; so a trigger before bed barely made any difference. She was snuggling up to one of the rainbow-coloured ferrets that I'd left in the room when she moved in; but I noticed that there seemed to be a lot less of them than there used to be. She was giving me mixed signals, for sure. She was finally willing to admit to herself that she needed a stuffie to sleep with, but at the same time she had... what? Thrown the others out? Put them at the back of the closet somewhere? That seemed like a weird decision.

I shrugged, and took care to lock the bedroom door again behind me as I went out. She needed to know that the boy in the house wouldn't be able to get in if he had any ideas in the middle of the night. I went downstairs to the kitchen, and turned the light on just briefly so that I could write a note on the little whiteboard calendar, so that whoever was next to wake wouldn't worry about where I had gone. And then I was driving through the dawn gloom, rushing to a disused industrial district on the edge of Moistville. They were filming something there, but Tyler had asked to meet at a little cafe whose menu seemed to consist entirely of different fried breakfast items. I guessed it must be popular among people on their way to physically demanding jobs in the industrial areas; but it wasn't somewhere I would normally have thought to go in.

He sat down beside me, and dropped a DVD in my lap. This one came in a little paper envelope, and I was pretty confident he wasn't trying to pull something. He wasn't that good an actor. I reached into my bag and tossed him the disc he'd given me last time. Then a waitress came over, and he asked for a coffee.

"I'm just going," I said when she asked if I wanted anything. Seeing the guy's look of disappointment made me feel powerful; but I couldn't dwell on the feeling. I needed to be going home, so that I could watch this thing with my family.

"Oh," he said before I left. "It's a long one. You know? They shoot all the scenes they might need, and then the master cut and the director's cut, they take out different bits. So this one has like, everything in. Might not be as good on the pacing."

"Thanks," I said, thinking that a long movie might be just what I needed. All the way home, on the drive and while I stood in line at the bank,I was wondering about whether I should pass that fact on to my little girls. Would they be reluctant to watch a movie if they expected it to be more than a couple of hours? Prototype scenes might make it harder to suspend disbelief, but knowing that it was a rough cut might discourage them.