Being Samantha Masters

an homage-sequel to Being Christina Chase

Distractions

Sammy, you have to text me when you get home from a date!  Rowan’s message was waiting on his phone when Sammy woke up the next morning.

How do you know if it was really a date?  he texted back, bleary-eyed.  I never told you how that shook out.

Ever since graduation from high school, my dream of the good life has seemed to be a lesson in futility. First there was my Mom’s accident, her injuries didn’t take her life, but maybe that would have been better. I loved my Mom but couldn’t stand to be around watching her in a wheelchair, knowing that most likely she would be confined to one for the rest of her life. The idiot driver walked away from the crash, apparently drunk, never admitting fault for the trouble and grief he caused.

Good Neighbors
By Maryanne Peters
With Thanks to justatawickedtaste on Deviant Art for the images

Part Eight by Iona Laing.

Chapter Twenty-two.

CHAPTER 77
Year by year, both our business and our son grew, and Geeta got her wish to see Sydney when we opened another branch there. Kul running it as a manager until we had integrated some more employees. One of them turned out to be Betty, who took over from Kul after a very few months, allowing the Butts to return. Ish was now five years old and in proper preschool, which he would regularly complain about.

“The reading’s boring, Dad!”

I feel my suspenders stretch as I reach up to dust the top shelf in the library. The stool wobbles slightly and I am afraid I may fall. I can feel “Sir’s” eyes on me as I work. I am so self-conscious that he may see my knickers as I work.

CHAPTER 76
We got a regular flow of letters after that, or perhaps it could be described as an intermittent drip feed. Every now and again, we would pop off a new snap of our boy, and hint about dates, but my mother-in-law never bit, not even to the extent of mentioning me at all, or using anything other than Malay for her correspondence. According to my wife, Mrs R even appeared to be matchmaking a few times, even though her daughter was already married. I began to feel a little unwanted by her.

No one asked for it, but here is the backstory Allie references to in ”The Duel”
This is an AI-assisted story as I wanted to see how close it could come to the storyline I wanted to write.
Created using NovelAI with very little change.
Let me know what you think (and I am not going to use AI for my other stories, just for these two,

The deep pain flared like shrapnel from an old battle, hard and sharp and deadly. The hot words straight from padre’s mouth — “I have no daughter!” And the cold ones, a year later, by his hand. “It is my specific desire and intent to disinherit . . . .”