Erik appeared in the doorway. “You call me?”
“Yeah. Take a look at this.”
She showed him the @nurture.mother.official account page.
“What is this?” he said, brow furrowed.
“Someone copying my page but with counter messages,” she said.
“What in the world?”
“Can we report them?”
He shrugged. “I’ll try. I guess there’s nothing proprietary about your design, but this is pretty egregious. I can’t remember—did Jer create the background?”
Jer did some small design tasks for the business, mostly related to their website. But he hadn’t made the background.
“No. It’s just something I found online.”
“Hmm, I don’t know if there’s anything we can do, then. We could hire someone to make a custom design for us, change our colors.”
“What? Why shouldwehave to change anything?They’rethe problem. People know my brand. I can’t go changing everything anytime someone like this comes along.”
“Okay, okay,” he said. “Let me see what I can do.”
“It’s clearly a new page. They only have a couple thousand followers. But we need to nip this in the bud.”
He handed the phone back to her.
“I’m on it,” he said. “Sorry, babe. Haters coming out of the woodwork.”
He was right. She’d heard it all at this point—Angeni Luna is tone deaf,Angeni Luna is the death of feminism,Angeni Luna is a witch.
“We knew there would be some backlash from the book deal,” he reminded her.
There had been backlash. Most people were genuinely supportive, but it was the negative comments that stuck with her:
is the title of the book ‘how to make motherhood much harder than it needs to be’? if not, that’s my suggestion. you’re welcome
if ur writing a book, whenever will u have time to can tomatoes?
You know what bugs me? The type of mothering you’re promoting would require most women to drop out of the workforce completely, meaning they would become financially dependent on their partner, thereby severely limiting what’s possible for their freedom and future. What you’re not saying in the image you’re selling (yes, selling) is that you, in fact, make significant money from book deals like this. You are telling women there is only one right way to mother, but you are really having it both ways. Do you see the hypocrisy?
“I suppose this is just testing my resolve,” she said.
“Exactly. Spirit is giving you obstacles to see how willing you are to overcome them.”
He was right. He always reflected back to her the core beliefs she held dear. He reminded her who she was.
“Thank you,” she said.
“I love you,” he said back to her.
He leaned over sleeping Freya and kissed Angeni on the mouth.
“I’m looking forward to later,” he said.
“Me too,” she said, though she wasn’t, not really. She would give him her body, out of obligation, which was something she’d sworn she’d never do again after too many episodes of meaningless, self-disrespectingsex in her younger years. Not that this was meaningless. Maybe, in marriage, obligatory sex was especially meaningful.
