✅ My Cousin's Keeper [NaNoWriMo 2021]

102. My Disappointment

That guy's name was Isaac. I had remembered it in the middle of the afternoon after I visited his shop. If anyone had been paying attention, they would have seen me look up from my computer and mutter "Isaac. Damn." in the middle of an otherwise busy afternoon of typing. But a bunch of people in our office were off doing all kinds of administrative tasks, and the only person who was paying me any kind of attention was Carter. I'd started wondering if she was up to something, the way she kept giving me sideways glances when she didn't think I was looking. But I quickly dismissed that; spoiled little rich kid didn't have any skills in subterfuge. She was probably just feeling guilty about how much time she had spent answering messages on her phone lately, and knew I was the only one who paid enough attention to notice what she was doing aside from her work. Her distractions had reduced slightly over the last week, but she was still on her phone a lot more than I had seen last year, and that made me worry.

Over the following week, I'd occasionally remembered the skinny old guy's name, reassuring myself that I would know it when I actually got to see him again. I'd also read up all the news about the New Ark comic series that Ffrances had seemed so interested in. The original series was a standalone comic consisting of three parts: bronze, silver, and gold. It had later been rewritten as a part of the Millhouse Underground universe, than that was why Ffrances was talking about it now. MK had apparently been working on a third version of the same story, a reboot which fleshed out some of the background characters and reintroduced details from the original Ark series that had been dropped in the first rewrite. The third part, Unbroken Ring, was based on the older Golden Ark comics, but it was rumoured the revised edition would also add new backstory to Cerberus Shark's long-dead cousin; who I had recently encountered when I started reading that Canon Flash book. That made me wonder if the new 'Gold Ring', as the fans had taken to calling it, was going to include more than a few hints about the upcoming movie.

That wasn't the important part. What really mattered was that this was something Ffrances really wanted; and supplies were extremely limited. It would be a perfect gift for her, if my industry connections could help me secure a copy. Of course, it wasn't a straight up case of asking the guys from Claughton, even if they would like to help. Because Claughton Innovative was sponsoring and promoting the movies, but didn't have direct access to the comics market. If I wanted to be sure of getting one of the rare issues that I needed, the only option was to find something Isaac wanted from the movie people, and then ingratiate myself into the production far enough that I would be able to get it.

That sounded like a lot of effort. More subterfuge would be needed; it would likely be even tougher than the hoops I'd had to jump through to make Tess my little. But I knew it would be worth it if I could pull it off. And I was already thinking about who I could talk to, and how I could set up events the way I wanted. It helped that SYL was doing just about every kind of administration and logistics for Claughton now, so we might almost be the same company. And I knew there were a few people on the CI side who had been impressed when they met my family at the secret premiere. If I just kept my wits about me and did my best to understand the people around me and what they wanted, I could find exactly what I needed.

I was distracted from that train of thought when a notification popped up in the corner of my screen. It was an application called ZoneWatcher, which I'd set up to alert me when there was movement visible on one of the webcams I had left at home. I wanted to know what Ffrances and Tess were talking about when I wasn't there. Just in case I found out that all my efforts were futile; although there was no way I could believe that. I wanted to understand how they were feeling, so I could ensure that all my plans would go smoothly.

They were in the kitchen now, fixing something quick for dinner. I'd said that I might be home late again, and I fully expected to have a short break for a burger or something rather than a proper meal. Ffrances knew her way around the kitchen better than I did, I suspected, and Tess was more than happy to help. I would have told her that she didn't need to, because it didn't seem appropriate for a little to be doing cooking and chores. But if I tried to imagine her as a real child, asking to help out when she didn't know how, I could see it would be a lot of fun for her.