Watching Her Work Part I
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She was finding it surprisingly easy to work with Gulliver in the room. Holding up a piece of agate she grinned at Gulliver, “reminds me of Henry.”
He laughed, “does it now?”
“Yes. I was working on a piece for a customer when the thing with Henry went down. They’d asked for something stark and eccentric and I was a bit stalled on it and then suddenly I was sitting here, breathing in the remnants of his odor and thought of the black stones I had in the cabinet out front. If I’d not gone out to get them, you and Thisbe likely would have come in the store front, met with Lottie and then been on your merry way. Damn Henry,” she muttered under her breath but found she didn’t really mean it.
Gulliver who was sitting near her watching her work flicked her shoulder, “not nice. It’s a good thing. I found my daughter and you found out you have nothing to fear from me. I will forever be grateful to the smelly little critter for inspiring you to go looking for black agate.”
She looked at him in surprise, “you know this is agate?”
“Well yeah. You used to have your textbooks out and your quline sites open all the time. I also did a deep dive la night:38 into stones. I was hoping to find some kind of sexv. I love vou.
Watching Her Work Part I
stone but I wasn’t lucky.”
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January shook her head, “you really didn’t need to buy all these stones.”
“I wanted to. Where do you keep them? Do you have a safe on the site?”
“I do. We can display a few of them but the more expensive ones I’ll keep locked up here or in my safety deposit box at the bank. We don’t usually have break and enter problems in our town, but you never know. My safe is bolted to the floor so it can’t easily be removed but it’s certainly not blast proof.”
“I can get my fellas to come in and secure the store for you. Considering we found audio and video equipment here, it’s probably not a bad idea to bolster your security here as well.”
“I’d appreciate that,” she said seriously. “Now that we’re getting more and more orders, especially with some of the notice I got at the last fair in Burlington, I will likely need to keep more product on hand.”
“We’ll get it sorted. Are you happy to keep this store front or would you prefer something bigger?”
“This is good for me. We’re out of the way. Most of our sales are online. I did a lot through Etsy and a few other online 2/5 crafting sites. I’ve gone to a lot of craft and artisanal fairs
12:38
Watching Her Work Part I
throughout the state.”
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“It never once dawned on me to look in such places,” he said seriously.
“No?”
“No. I honestly for a brief time thought you’d been taken. Then I realized you’d run away and wanted to make a life for yourself. I thought for sure you’d go somewhere like Miami or LA because your work is good enough to be on runways and if you weren’t going to hit a New York runway, it was going to be there. It also never occurred to me that you’d all change your name to your mother’s name. I couldn’t fathom any reason for you to leave me, so it didn’t make sense to me you were hiding from me.
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“What did you think I left for?”
“I didn’t know. As I said, originally I thought perhaps you were taken by an enemy. Then I considered for some time that Duchess got to you, but I’d made damn sure nobody in Europe knew
your name. Everything I did with you was discretely done. Nobody back home knew you and Thisbe were friends. People knew Thisbe had a friend, but nobody tied me to her friend other than I took you both everywhere. She was a good
cover.”
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You really thought I just up and left you with no reason?”
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Watching Her Work Part I
“I thought perhaps you were all hurt somehow.”
“What?”
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“A car accident or in a plane. I thought perhaps something happened to your family and you left school in a hurry to go to them and in doing so, you were also involved in an accident. I thought maybe you had amnesia or the like. It never once dawned on me you left me because you hated my guts.”
“I didn’t run because I hated your guts, Gulliver,” she said quietly as she adjusted a piece of silver wire around the stone, studying it through the magnifying glass. “I came home to hear your fight and I called my father. I was broken, Gulliver. I was ugly crying, snot bubbles, eyes near shut from the swelling, hiding while I waited for him to come get me because it was all a lie. I heard you say I was never going to be anything more than your mistress and someone else would birth your heir and I would never be the wiser. I was gutted. My heart was so broken. It wasn’t hated which took me from you. The hate came later. I honestly wasn’t much involved in anything regarding leaving or the move. Dad called Davis. Davis put the fear of God in him. We were moving. I was too destroyed. emotionally to be involved in any of the decision making. I went where they told me. I did what they said to do. I was not an active participant in the planning, Gulliver. I was too broken.”
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Watching Her Work Part I
“Broken and carrying our daughter.”
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“She was what kept me going. If it weren’t for her, for the child which grew in my belly, I,” she blinked back tears with the memory, “I don’t know if I’d be here today, Gulliver.”
“What do you mean?” he was leaning over her shoulder now. “January, what does that mean?”
“It means there was more than one night I wished I wouldn’t wake up. I was incredibly depressed. I wanted to fall asleep and not wake up and deal with the pain. Mom kept telling me I needed to be strong for my baby but at first even she didn’t seem real. It was only the first time I felt her move that I knew she was really there and I needed to live for her. Eventually, I got better and that was when the hate and anger came. I wanted to die because of a man, and it made me feel so weak and so pathetic and my daughter deserved a mother much stronger than that.”
