✅ My Cousin's Keeper [NaNoWriMo 2021]

49. My Late Night Negotiation

There were only five minutes left before my business meeting, so I went up to my office again. The door to the nursery was already closed, and I saw the light under the door click off as I went past. Such a good girl, I was sure that my little would be ready for school tomorrow. And I promised myself that I would do this more often, using the trigger to help her in her pretence of being a big girl. Every time she asked, I would tell her not to have an accident. And she would have no more than one wet night each week; sometimes none at all. I needed her to be certain that the hypnosis was really helping her, so she would trust it and me. I would miss seeing her embarrassment when she woke up wet; but I knew that I would be able to subtly increase the frequency again once she was already sure that her new technique was helping. This was a long-term plan, after all.

The call took less than twenty minutes. Shimatoyou was an accomplished businessman; he knew exactly what he wanted, and how SYL could help him to get it. We discussed the details, and I filled out a project request for submission to my management team. The job itself would probably be assigned to someone else, as I was busy lately, but that barely mattered.

And then it was time for a more important call. I stood up and double-checked that the door was closed. Nobody in the rest of the house could hear me now. This room had been used as some kind of nursery by the previous owners, and I could only guess that they'd had a very loud baby. The whole room was soundproofed. Originally I'd thought that made it a good office because I could join in conference calls from home without disturbing Ffrances, or without picking up the sound of kids playing outside. But now, my concern was more for privacy. I didn't want to wake Tess if I became emotional when I was worrying about her, but more than that I didn't want her to know that I was worrying so much. I needed to build her trust, even while I was going behind her back to protect her from a sexual predator.

When I was sure that we wouldn't be overheard, I took my phone out and called John's new number.

It was a difficult conversation. After a couple of minutes, his wife joined in as well. They both wanted to be told that Tess was doing well, and that she didn't have any problems at school. I told them that I'd seen the mini report card her history teacher had given her, and other such trivial details. She was doing fine, and wasn't hiding problems from them. The only problem was a boy in her life, I said. A boy of a kind I knew very well, who would go to any lengths to take advantage of a young girl. He looked like he was at least in the year above her, if not a high school graduate.

They didn't believe me. They told me that Spike was the child of a broken home; that he had spun them a sob story to convince them that he should be allowed to spend the night under the same roof as their daughter. He was a good boy, they said, without any hint of an ulterior motive. He was kind for the sake of being kind, and helped people just because he could. I didn't argue, but I could immediately see the naïve flaw in their reasoning. It was impossible to see someone else's motives, so there was no way to know what his real intentions were. Any person who did the right thing could just as easily be someone hoping to claim a reward. He would do whatever it took to get what he really wanted. And as a boy in his late teens, I knew exactly what he wanted more than anything else.

They had other stories too. Tales that he had spun to try and convince them he was a victim. They told me that he was younger than my baby, despite being nearly a foot taller than Tess and sporting the first growth of a beard. And they told me that he was gay, a fact easily disproved by the fact that it was a young girl he was preying on. They were so trusting, and I guess that's a good thing usually. If it was anyone else, I would have worried about their kid and hoped that she would be smart enough to see the truth sooner or later. Like I had; it hadn't done me any harm. But this was Tess we were talking about. My little. I couldn't let anything happen to her. But I could see that John and Trish Naylor were content to let her make her own mistakes; they'd bought into her claims of maturity just as much as the boy's claims of innocence.

I had to move faster. I couldn't be angry with him. I knew that Ffrances would try to let Tess make those mistakes, because she didn't know her like I did. She still didn't realise how young Tess was on the inside. If they were spending time together outside the house, I couldn't protect her. And I couldn't keep her at home, not without having my authority tested. I couldn't stand her thinking of me as a monster.

"I guess you're right," I mumbled. "I'll give this kid a chance." As if they could really see what kind of person he was. It was obvious from the start; would any upstanding young man choose to call himself 'Spike' and hang around with children? Even the name was suspicious. Especially when he didn't share his real name with the girl's parents. But I had to agree with them for now. I had to be nice to him.

I would have to move forward with Tess's regression, and quickly. She would lose interest in a dangerous boy of that kind; maybe she would no longer need to spend days loitering around town with her friends, striving to be a rebellious teen. And I was sure that once she was small enough, 'Spike' would lose interest. Like all men, he would have no interest in a child.

Once the call was over, with a reluctant promise that she would be allowed to spend time with that kid trying to corrupt her, I went over the plan in my head again. I knew that it was going to work; so I tried to stop thinking about it and put it out of my mind. I slipped out of the office, back to my own bed, and drifted to sleep with visions of how happy my little would be next year drifting through my head.