I look down at the table, John says listen, what you do is your business, Ishredded everything in the folder. But you need to learn not to trust juste...veryone. I nod. He says I am leaving today instead of Monday. I need youto be strong and take care of yourself until mom and dad come home and Icome back. He hugs me and gets up. He grabs his duffle and I watch as hegets in his truck and drives off.I go upstaters and grab my cell and text Phillip. I lay there a few minutesand no reply. I jump in. I took a swig of milk and swallowed. In mere seconds, the cookie was gone. In fact, continued my aunt, youre so big you deserve another cookie. She handed me another steaming treat. I vanished as quickly as the last. I had not been this happy in a long time. Aunt Abby and I spent the entire day together. We did all the things we used to do when I was a kid. We played games, we dressed her cats in silly outfits, we baked another batch of cookies. Everything was exactly as I remembered. But, like. “With Sun.”Alice’s eyes flicked to me. “Oh, I thought me and you could hang out in my room. I have a few new teen magazines we could look out.”“What’s this?” Mommy said, arching an eyebrow. “Are my two munchkins getting along? What changed?”Alice blushed and I grinned, “Oh, we talked last night. After the spanking. It was very—”“Nice,” spluttered Alice, giving me a look. “Nice. That’s all. It was a nice conversation. Right, Melody? Nice. I wouldn’t mind continuing it today.”“But it’s such a. She made it clear that she intended to be the mistress of my domain in due course. I was also required to escort her to various social events, which quickly became time consuming, as well as insisting that we took time for our own enjoyment.Fortunately Jane was working out well and Emily was able to delegate many of her mundane and time consuming tasks to her. I gave Emily free rein to employ extra staff when and if she needed to. The one post that we needed to fill urgently was that of estate.