Total pages in book: 105
Estimated words: 101662 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 508(@200wpm)___ 407(@250wpm)___ 339(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 101662 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 508(@200wpm)___ 407(@250wpm)___ 339(@300wpm)
“Shouldn’t you be getting ready to entertain your guests?” Ava asked as I walked into her bedroom with two slices of three-day-old birthday cake. We had just celebrated her birthday, and I was blown away by the fact that I had a fourteen-year-old.
“I needed a moment of solitude before everyone arrives. Cake?” I offered, plopping down on the edge of her bed.
“Always,” she replied, taking her slice and diving right in. “You know, you could always tell Dad that you don’t like dinner parties,” she stated matter-of-factly. As if going against Henry’s plans was ever an option. If he didn’t get his way, he’d be a nightmare to deal with. I had to pick and choose my battles with him, which resulted in dinner parties and fake smiles at people who I could hardly stand.
“The dinner parties are fun,” I lied.
“Liar,” she replied.
Ava was a professional at reading me like an open book. Some days, I swore she knew me better than my husband did.
“It’s a very important dinner, I guess,” I explained.
“All of Dad’s parties are important,” Ava commented as she shoved a forkful of Funfetti cake into her mouth. “Because he’s important.”
She wasn’t wrong. In addition to being brilliant, Henry was extremely important in his industry. He didn’t think like other people, which was so refreshing when we’d first met. His business, Sweet, was a high-tech company that was taking home technology to a whole new place. It covered everything, and I mean everything. The latest technology used artificial intelligence to learn humans within their home, so it would know exactly when a person wanted a cup of coffee—before the thought even crossed their mind. They were also working on a system that used light to brighten people’s moods in an instant.
While what he’d accomplished was impressive, I was kind of scared of how little control his technology seemed to give people. If artificial intelligence could be used to brighten a person’s mood, it could probably be used for darkening a person’s personality, too. I didn’t like the idea of that, yet Henry simply told me that I wasn’t informed enough to understand what he was doing.
Henry not only spoke to Ava and me about his technology. Often, his work also came home with him. And of course, my home was the laboratory to test everything out. I lived in a fully operating smart house that knew me better than I knew myself.
Though, sometimes I wondered about the coffee system. It felt very “which came first, the chicken or the egg” to me. Did the AI know I craved a coffee, or did I smell the coffee after it was brewed and then I craved it?
Either way, Sweet lived up to its tagline. Let us take care of the small tasks so we can make your life Sweet.
You couldn’t go a week without seeing his name in the headlines. He was basically the next Steve Jobs when it came to innovation. He even went through a black turtleneck and blue jeans era when he started out.
Like I said, Henry Hughes was a brilliant businessman. He was a good father, too, when he wasn’t traveling the world for business meetings. And when it came to his friendships? Top tier. That man was loved by so many that I was somewhat jealous of the version of him that the world received. I was jealous of every being that crossed his path. When my husband spoke to anyone, he spoke as if they were the center of his world. He revolved around them solely. And when I was present in front of others, I’d get flickers of that light. In front of others, I was his everything. I was the love of his life, his sun, his galaxy. Yet when those doors closed, I became his shadow.
It wasn’t always like that. At one point, I thought he really loved me. Cherished me. Yet, those days seemed few and far between. Still, I put on a brave face as if I were happy with him because I cared more about keeping my relationship with Ava as strong as it could be. You see, Ava wasn’t my biological daughter. I met her and Henry when Ava was five years old. She was the brightest light and had been the greatest gift to my life I’d ever received. Though, when Henry and I first went through a rough patch, he told me we could divorce but I’d never see Ava again.
That threat alone was enough to make me stay. A life without Ava was no life at all, to my mind. Even if that meant staying in a loveless marriage. I never complained around Ava about living in Henry’s shadow because I knew how much she loved her father.
To be fair, I often wished I felt the same way about Henry that Ava did. Maybe I would’ve liked him and his dinner parties a lot more.