✅ My Cousin's Keeper [NaNoWriMo 2021]

28. My Guilty Pleasure

I'd woken up early in the morning, comparing myself to Tess's parents. Quite an unfavourable comparison, in my mind. I knew that they loved her very much, and that they had done everything they could to ensure her a comfortable life. But at the same time, they had left to travel halfway around the world, and I got the impression this wasn't a rare thing. Even when they were staying in one home, they would vanish for days or weeks at a time to attend business conferences and further their careers.

I'd thought less of them when I heard that. Having a baby girl to care for was the ultimate goal in life for me, and I couldn't understand why anyone would ever leave a child to fend for herself. But then I had been told to attend this conference; I just didn't have the choice. Jessop had come in to give me the assignment, so I knew it was important, and I felt that so much was riding on my acceptance. It could be the key to a promotion, or more. So I'd agreed to it, dashed home to leave a note for Tess, and then boarded the next train.

I told myself it wasn't that bad, that it was only one night. And I'd asked Ffrances to check on her in the morning if possible; assuming that a week had been long enough to get her sleep cycles back into a normal rhythm. But still, I felt bad about being so far away from my baby.

On my return, I had asked two of the temps – Carter and Walcroft – to make sure the project calendars were all up to date, so I would know well in advance if anything like that was likely to come up again. I didn't think it would; Upper Ashfields was a progressive garden village, or a future community, according to the planning committees, and nearly every client was impressed by the ease with which we could host all of their functions. Accommodation, corporate buildings, and local shops were all connected by pedestrian bridges and tunnels; every building was separated from the roads by a park. For SYL, which owned a lion's share of the village's integrated business and technology park, it was always easier to host clients, and would give them a business advantage as well. It was good for me, because having a world-class conference centre meant that in most situations our clients would come to us. I didn't like travelling.

Later in the day, after dealing with everything that had cropped up in my absence from the office, I looked at my schedule and thought that I might have a chance to finish early for once. I had certainly billed more client hours than I usually did that week, and I was owed a little personal time. But of course, nothing else ever goes smoothly. One of my other clients was coming in to make a final payment, which he wanted to do in person, and that meant I had to be there to wish him success and try to recommend the other services that the corporate overlords could offer; like legal, insurance, and accounting services.

While I waited for my last visitor of the day, I allowed myself to get a little distracted. I might still be in the office, but all of my actual work was waiting on other people now, so I had nothing to do but browse the web and catch up with some stories I had started reading. And if a couple of those gripping narratives were about young women being turned into young children by one coincidence or another, there was certainly nothing wrong with that. It was good to broaden my mind, and if I was lucky it might give me some new ideas.

When we had collected payment, and Mr Mahel had signed his exit contract to say that he was satisfied with my performance and had nothing to complain about, it was time for me to go. It wasn't too late, and I thought I would still get back in time to cook dinner for Tess. Until, that was, I checked the tray of the printer and found a document I had certainly not been expecting to see again. It was a page of a short story, The Baby Button, and I'd read the latest chapter only an hour before. I was certain, however, that I hadn't printed it out. I never did.

I quickly fed all of the pages into the shredder, not sure what else to do with them, and then peered around the office wondering if anyone could have seen them. It was quiet; we didn't have enough staff for a full office right now, and most of them were working from home or were in one of the meeting rooms right now. But I still had to work out how I could have printed something like that without meaning to. Was there some shortcut that could be clicked by accident, or something like that? I started to get paranoid, looking around my computer and trying to work out how I could possibly have made such a catastrophic mistake.

In the end, I checked my printer queue. That was accessed through the departmental portal, and wasn't a setting on my own computer, so I knew it would be both accurate, and probably entirely unhelpful. I could see a log of every document that had been printed, both assigned to my user account, and billed to my team's budget code, as well as everything printed from my computer. I double checked, but there was nothing on there that I didn't recognise.

It had to be a computer bug, I was sure of that. But now, thanks to my trust in the internal organisation of my office, I could be sure that the document wouldn't have had a cover sheet with my name on. There would be no way for anyone to link them back to me, and if someone had seen the words before I disposed of them, they would likely to assume that they were the property of a creep like Tony, who seemed to divide his coworkers into superiors to avoid, subordinate men to yell at, and tits to stare at. I could feel relieved, for now. I was in the clear, but I knew I would have to be a lot more careful with my browsing in the future if things like this could happen.

Author's Note: I would like to know if anyone can guess what's going on here. There's something that Gabby has missed, but I think the clues are there for anyone who wants to figure it out. Give me your guesses, please ☺

Also, in case anyone hasn't seen the link yet, the next 7 chapters of this book are available now if you contribute $1 or $2 to my Patreon, kittyangel. Tiers $5+ will give you the next 2 Plot Bunnies, 14 chapters of this book, and 10 chapters of The Last New Start; plus immediate access to new parts as I write them (I'm trying to add at least 2 new chapters every day).