January 2021 #2
“I have a question,” I began, crossing my arms as I looked at my daughter. “Did you buy the book, or did George?”
That quickly, her face scrunched up. “I bought it, and he’s gonna pay me back.”
Sam grunted.
“Hannah,” I replied softly.
“Okay, so I have a stipend from when I do work for Uncle Aaron, and I––”
Sam lifted his hand. “I don’t want to know what a third edition of Pride and Prejudice costs, and I’ll bet George doesn’t either.
Whatever you ask him for is gonna be ridiculously low.
I know that, you know that, so let’s just leave it.
As long as I’m not paying for it, or paying Aaron Sutter back for it, I’m good. ”
She sighed deeply, clearly pleased.
After throwing the bottle cap away, I walked Sam a few feet away, near the front window. “Your daughter is never going to learn the value of money,” I cautioned him under my breath.
“Then you shouldn’t have ever introduced her and Aaron,” he countered, sipping his beer. “As it is, we both know she’s gonna work for him someday, and I’ll bet you money she’ll be Batman.”
I looked up into his face. “I’m sorry, what?”
He gestured at his daughter, who was leaning across the table, smiling at her boyfriend as she gazed into his eyes.
For his part, Jake appeared lobotomized.
Hannah wrecked him, and it was sweet to see.
“She’s going to have access to God knows how much money, and since she’s already trained to defend herself, and he’s ventured into tech, doesn’t it follow that he’ll be Lucius Fox to her Bruce Wayne? ”
“That’s one of the most terrifying things you’ve ever said to me.”
“Oh yeah?” he teased me, one eyebrow lifted. “I think I can do you one better.”
I grimaced as I held his gaze.
“She’s going to want to have the birth control talk with you shortly.”
I glanced over at her, now sitting in Jake’s lap, arms around his neck, looking just as besotted as he did. “I know.”
Sam took a breath. “Half of me wants to kill him.”
Quick nod from me. “And the other half is happy because it’s Jake, and you know all about his heart.”
“Yep.”
“It will be Hannah who breaks it off,” I assured my husband. “She’ll be the one to walk away from him.”
Quiet but clear scoff from my husband. “Are you kidding?”
I chuckled. “Love, she’s going to fly away and see the world. She has college to go to, a career to create for herself. Think of all the people who will come in and out of her life.”
“Mark my words,” Sam told me, squinting as he looked out our front window, “it’ll be Jake I hand her off to when I walk…her…down the aisle.”
“You have lost your mind if you––”
“Hold that thought,” he rushed out, passing me his beer as he went to the front door and threw it open, staring outside.
“Sam,” I advised worriedly, “you’re wearing socks and sweats. I don’t think––”
But he was gone before I could say anything more, and Hannah and Jake were beside me as I watched my husband bolt to our front gate, open it quickly, and run through, crossing the street to slip between two parked cars.
Our neighbors were having a holiday party, despite the warnings in effect, and earlier, I’d seen no one wearing a mask.
“I should go make sure Dad’s okay,” Hannah began, taking a step out onto the porch.
“No,” I ordered, putting my arm out to catch her. “You stay right where you are, Bruce.”
“What?” she asked.
“Never mind,” I replied distractedly, watching my husband go around to the passenger side of some kind of SUV, bend over, and straighten up with a child in his arms.
It looked like she, or he, was wearing a fuzzy pink bunny suit from where I was, and when I shot off the porch and came around the front of the SUV, I realized that it was, in fact, right out of A Christmas Story. The toddler could not have been more than three.
“Hi, cookie,” I greeted the child, who instantly leaned sideways into my arms. “What’s your name?”
“Ruby,” she told me, reaching up to tangle her little hand in my hair.
“Where’s your mommy, sweetie?”
But she didn’t answer, instead heaving out a breath and bumping her head down onto my shoulder so I got a bunny ear in my face.
“Take her home,” Sam directed me, pulling his cell from the back pocket of his sweats.
He normally put it on the coffee table in the living room when he got home, but he was carrying it because he was waiting on a call from Chris Becker.
Apparently one of his guys was being checked into rehab, and they were going back and forth about how to proceed.
“I’m gonna go house to house and see who’s missing a kid. ”
Of course he was. That was how knights in shining armor did things.
“First you come home with me and put on a coat, a hat, a mask, and boots. That is non-negotiable,” I informed him. “I refuse to have you catch pneumonia when we’ve kept clear of Covid this whole time.”
He agreed under protest.
“Like running around in wet socks in sixteen-degree weather is smart.”
“I need to find her parents,” he growled at me.
“You will,” I soothed him, reaching up to touch his cheek. “How did you even see her?”
“She was in the street,” he grumbled, and I could hear his simmering anger.
God help whoever Sam found.
Turning, I walked the little girl back to my house and into the waiting arms of Hannah, who took her immediately to the kitchen when Ruby answered that yes, she was hungry.
Kola and Harper decided to go with Sam instead of starting the next quest in Diablo, mostly because I shot my son a look.
I didn’t want Sam stalking up and down our street without backup.
When Ruby had to go to the bathroom, Hannah took her, but she went in alone.
“Just like you at three,” I told my daughter.
“Really?”
I nodded. “You were potty-trained too, and you weren’t a baby anymore, so no one was allowed to go in with you.”
“Independent is good.”
“It is,” I agreed. “As long as you don’t leave home too fast.”
She blew me a kiss as the door opened. Ruby couldn’t reach the sink to wash her hands, because we didn’t have a stool. Hannah got one from the kitchen, because she and I were not tall people, and Ruby was very pleased.
I was checking the neighborhood message board online when I was surprised by a knock at the front door, and answered it to find a social worker, a police detective, and two uniformed CPD detectives.
“Good evening, Mr. Harcourt,” the detective greeted me after showing me his badge. “I’m Detective Daley O’Meara.”
I shook his hand, and I could tell he was smiling from the crinkle of the laugh lines around his eyes. He was masked, as they all were, but the warm tone of his voice came through loud and clear. I liked him immediately.
“May we come in, sir, and assess your short visitor?”
“Please,” I allowed, stepping aside and letting them in. The two uniforms remained outside. “You can come in too.”
“Oh no, sir,” the female officer declined, smiling. “We’re here in case the child’s parents show up and simply want to take her and go.”
“That won’t fly, right?”
“That’s correct, sir.”
“Please let me make you both some coffee or cocoa or something. And I have outdoor heaters I can set up, and––”
“Sir, we will not turn down the cocoa, but the heater isn’t necessary.”
“You got it,” I told them, and closed the door and darted to the kitchen.
Ruby didn’t want to get out of Hannah’s lap as she talked to everyone, and it was cute how she wanted to give everyone a graham cracker.
I used my Yeti travel mugs and got the officers all squared away, and by the time Sam got back, frozen, with Kola and Harper looking like popsicles as well, the social worker was ready to take Ruby with her.
The thing was, it was already late, and they only had a few places to take toddlers, and it was going to be scary for her.
“We can keep her until you find her a family or come up with grandparents or something,” Sam told them.
“That would probably be best for tonight,” the social worker agreed.
Detective O’Meara shook Sam’s hand, and I watched my husband give him a pat on the face that I wasn’t expecting. Watching them all leave, my Yeti mugs returned, I turned to my husband after he closed the front door.
“How do you know Detective O’Meara?”
“He’s Duncan’s old partner’s kid,” he said, walking to the kitchen sink to wash his hands.
“Really?”
He nodded. “Yeah. Good kid, good cop.”
“He’s not a kid, Sam, he’s probably in his thirties.”
He squinted at me. “Anyone younger than me is a kid.”
I rolled my eyes at him.
Right around eleven, Sam went back outside when three police cruisers were suddenly on our street, lights going, and lots of officers.
When I looked outside, checking on my husband as he made his way to our front gate, I saw a man pacing in front of our neighbor’s house directly across the street, and yelling.
There was a woman there with her face in her hands, crying, shaking, another man with his arm around her, and several other people milling about.
Into the fray walked Sam, and minutes after that, I saw that Detective O’Meara was there, this time with a tall Black woman who, from the disdainful shake of her head, did not look at all impressed by the wailing the woman was doing, who everyone was trying to comfort.
Sam came back inside and explained that the woman with O’Meara was his partner, Detective Mekia Hall.
“Nice to meet you,” I greeted her.
“And you, sir,” she replied.
“You didn’t look happy with the lady who was crying,” I stated.
“Yeah, neither would you,” she told me. “That’s Ruby’s mother.”
“What?” I was confused.
“Apparently, she left that party with her boyfriend, her aunt’s party, for another one. She told her mother that she put her daughter down for a nap in a back bedroom since she was going to be up late tonight.”
“No,” I tried not to yell.