Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 70546 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 353(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 70546 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 353(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
And holy shitemaster, did they ever not want it.
Not only did my grandma and Elmira both end up having two girls each, but those girls also hated each other. They were oil and water, fire and ice, peanut butter and tuna fish, and all the other things that just didn’t work out well together. They weren’t friends, and they wanted nothing to do with each other.
After years of trying to force a friendship between their girls, my mom graduated and took herself across the country. My aunt did the same. The Wonderduck girls, however, stayed in Seattle while my mom met my dad in New York, got married there, and had my brother and me. Across the country, Elmira’s oldest daughter decided she didn’t want kids. She wanted to live in Paris and make super amazing clothing. And her younger daughter had one son. Just one. He was born about five years before I was even a thought for my parents. But as soon as I popped out and was not a boy at all, our grandmas started their scheming.
Boy, did they ever scheme.
I have to grip the wheel tight and bite down on all the things I want to say—unforgivable things that can’t be taken back. I’m angry now, but my family is still my family. I can’t choose them, but that doesn’t mean I want to lose them. “Granny threatened to disinherit you, and Elmira threatened her daughter if you didn’t make the stupid engagement agreement when I was born. I know you both protested and hissed and spat about it, but in the end, they both got their way. You betrothed your three-year-old daughter via formal paperwork to some nine-year-old on the other side of the country, and then you didn’t tell me about it until yesterday. What am I missing here?”
“This can be a good thing. It doesn’t have to ruin your life.” My mom sounds pleading, probably even to herself. I’ve never heard her beg for anything in her life. She’s always had this quiet dignity that I respected and envied.
Well, poo on that.
I pull my car over to the side of the freeway a little too aggressively, making dust kick up behind me. I’m pissed off, but not as pissed off as my bladder is because I haven’t pulled over in forever, and I keep missing all the gas stations. The ones I did end up hitting to fill up my gas weren’t ideal. Like, peeing was barely possible there. Even if I were the world’s grossest, nastiest, poop-dwelling insect, I wouldn’t have peed there.
I flick my hazards on, which my mom can obviously hear clicking into the phone speaker.
“What’s that? Where are you? Are you in trouble? If you’re in trouble, we’ll fix it. We’ll help you. Just stay where you are. We’ll bring you home, and everything will be fine. I promise. You’re my daughter, Nina, and I love you.”
“Everything will not be fine. You might come and get me, but you’re not willing to break the engagement, are you?”
An uncomfortable beat of silence confirms my suspicion. I’m not being fair by telling her these things when we already hashed it out yesterday. This is just a repeat of the scene where I snatched the contract from my dad, dashed to my room, grabbed whatever cash I had on hand, my car keys, and a quick change of clothes, and then got the heck out of there before anyone could stop me.
To be clear, they did try and stop me.
There might have been a mad dash that involved my dad, my mom, my little brother, and my granny chasing me down the street while I ran like my life depended on it in the most practical of all footwear—fuzzy orange flip-flops.
Whatever. I wasn’t thinking clearly when I’d just been told that I’d been engaged for most of my life and didn’t even know it. One word kept repeating in my head and slamming through every single bit of my being. Escape. Escape. Escape.
“What happened? Did your car break down? Did you hit something on the road? Nina! Answer me! Where do you even think you’re going anyway?”
“I know you froze my bank accounts and credit cards. The only thing you haven’t done is cancel the plates on my car because if something happens and I’m driving it, we all know it’s worth a fortune, and Dad’s too smart at business to be on the hook for that and not receive insurance. He doesn’t want anyone to have a reason to sue him.”
“Nina Anne! Your father loves you! We both love you! You need to turn around and come home this minute. We froze your accounts so you wouldn’t get in trouble.”
“Sure you did, Mom. No, you froze them so that I’d have to do what you say. So that I’d be totally dependent on you. It makes total sense now why you were both always so protective. You weren’t watching out for me. You were saving me from lechers and stuff so I could be marriage material for good old Thaddius Wonderduck, my secret husband-to-be.”