Total pages in book: 38
Estimated words: 35443 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 177(@200wpm)___ 142(@250wpm)___ 118(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 35443 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 177(@200wpm)___ 142(@250wpm)___ 118(@300wpm)
"So you're shopping today?" I ask, casually taking a sip of my own coffee.
"I'm not shopping, I'm—" He just stops. Because when you boil it all down, that's all Cash does. He buys things. Things we need, absolutely. But it's shoppin' nonetheless.
His chair scrapes back on the hardwoods and he stands up, reaching for his hat that spent breakfast time on the chair next to him. He puts it on his head and says, "Have a nice day, Savannah."
Then he walks out, huffin' and grumblin' the same way he walked in.
Marcus. He's gettin' to all of us.
Well, two of us.
Because God knows where Wyatt is. He's wearing his entitlement on his sleeve these days. Sleepin' in the cabin on the far side of the east pasture, never shows up for meals anymore, and I can't even remember the last time he actually did work around here.
And Colt is just… gone.
I miss him terribly.
The past few months have been devastatingly, crushingly disruptive. Last spring, the four of us sat at this table together twice a day. It was a ritual instilled in us as children. No one skipped breakfast or dinner. Not even Wyatt when he was going through his “cocaine phase”.
Now, it's like that life never existed. Cash only came in here and sat down out of habit. But he's soon gonna realize—maybe next week, maybe next month—that he doesn't have to anymore. And then he won't.
At least when Mercy and Legion were here, dinner was an actual event.
Now, it's just Cash and me being performative.
And it's not gonna last.
It's defeating, actually, to realize that the mother you both love and hate was the only thing holding this family together. That her high expectations and strict protocols actually shaped something special.
Shaped the whole meaning of the word “family” from the Ashby perspective.
The spirit of all that she was, all that she poured into us, lingers still.
But it's fading like an expensive perfume dotted on your wrist this morning. Fleeting and evanescent.
And soon, it'll be gone and it won't ever be back.
I sit with this for a few minutes. Pushing eggs around my plate, sipping coffee sweetened with vanilla creamer, imagining life after Eleanor's soul finally departs for better places.
And I realize… I can't live with it.
I spend the day wandering around the house, around the barn, around anything I can, feeling quite lost. Not able to admit that I am in mourning for the Little Ashby Princess.
Eleanor's death was some time ago now and the thrice daily uploads of me stopped well before that, so it's not like I've been walking through my day with the weight of a camera on me.
But it's always been there, in spirit at least.
And now… it definitively is not.
There's an emptiness.
And even as I think these words, I get it. I'm bein' dramatic in the way that only a woman raised on a curated myth of herself can be.
People have actual problems. Starvation. Violence. Illness without medicine and children without shoes.
And I'm sittin' here throwin' yet another elaborate pity party over things that aren't even real.
It's one thing to miss your brother. It's quite another to miss your… celebrity.
That word. Celebrity.
There's something wrong with me. Something deep, and structural, and actual.
But in the same breath, there's nothin' wrong with me either. I'm not any different than anyone else when you strip all the decorations away.
Endings are hard because beginnings are empty.
And sadness fill that hole like water in a bucket because sadness is free and everywhere. It's the first thing available when things disappear.
That's what longing is.
A desperate attempt to hang on by your fingernails to the only thing you understood to the roots because letting go is falling, and falling is risky.
Unknown risky.
If you're hanging by a thread, at least you understand the risk.
Letting go is an empty beginning.
"For fuck's sake, Savannah," I mutter. "You're so goddamned dramatic today, you should write a poetry book. Title it—Boo Hoo."
I'm just about to go into the dining room to wait for dinner to be served, when the low rumble of a motorcycle echoes in the distance.
I look at the front window, walking quickly over to it, and even before the dust clears, I know it's Legion.
Of course it's Legion. Who else in the known world would roll up the private drive of the Ashby mansion on a machine that sounds like it was dragged, screamin' and spittin', straight out of the mouth of hell itself?
My first thought is… Oh, God. What's happened now.
It's not even a question when I think it. It lands flat, certain, the way you say of course when something terrible confirms what you already suspected. Because a drop-in visit from Legion comes attached with statements like I killed thirty-six people this morning.
I rush to the door, throw it open, and run down the stone walkway toward the drive. His bike materializes through the rolling cloud of dust like the fifth horseman of the apocalypse. Matte black on matte black. It's not a machine that wants to be seen. It just is—existing without apology, taking up exactly as much space as it wants.