Chapter 3 #2
He laughed. “Absolutely. They are the best kinds of friends to have. We went to college together way back when, so we’ve been friends a long time.”
“I don’t even know that I have or know anybody from way back when anymore,” she muttered, staring out the window. She really didn’t.
It was a sad fact, but it seemed her entire life had been mostly spent in survival mode.
Just getting through her schooling had seemed to take every ounce of oomph that she could muster.
But, hey, she had made it. So now she had a good paycheck, and, with the new hours, she should manage okay with the twins and their school schedule.
She just had to get a few paychecks under her belt for added leeway.
“What will you do as soon as we get your car back on the road?” he asked.
“Buy groceries,” she declared. “I was down to just French toast, since I hadn’t gone shopping yet and not much else was in the house. I didn’t want to move a lot of food either, so I used up what I could beforehand.”
He gave a soft chuckle at that.
She added, “Kids can eat you out of house and home.”
He smiled. “Isn’t that the truth?”
“Do you have any kids?” she asked.
“Nope. I’m not married,” he replied, “and I don’t have kids who I’ve left behind with no father either.”
She thought about that for a moment. “That is a good thing. Nothing quite like kids left someplace where nobody wants them,” she muttered. “That’s why I made the decision I did. I would hate for that to be my life or theirs.”
“I would hate for it to be my life too,” Camden agreed. “Unfortunately, that’s exactly what mine was.”
She stared at him and then winced. “Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that.”
“Hey, it’s not your fault. That’s just life.
My mom had a teenage pregnancy, and my teenage dad wasn’t interested or equipped to pick up the slack.
So, it was a pretty rough childhood. I got bounced around a lot,” he shared, his gaze on the road.
“My grandparents took me in eventually. When they passed on,” he added, “my father decided he could try being a parent. It didn’t go so well. ”
She stared at him and swallowed hard. “I don’t think I could handle all that,” she muttered. “My tendency would probably be to run and hide somewhere.”
He eyed her curiously. “I’m not really the hiding type,” he declared.
She smiled. “No, and I guess it’s not so much that I’m the hiding type either, but I’ve certainly been the kind to keep my head tucked down and out of trouble,” she muttered. “And yet somehow it still seems to find me.” When he looked over at her, she noted the tire.
“Ah, right,” he replied, “but that can happen to anybody.”
“I hope it’s done happening to me,” she stated. “I don’t really want to be in the crosshairs of bad luck.”
He smiled. “We’ll get you set up again.” And, with that, he pulled up into her driveway, right beside her car. He hopped out of his car, popped the trunk, and brought out her tire.
She stared at it and shook her head. “It doesn’t even look injured.”
At her choice of words, he burst out laughing. “I don’t think it’s injured,” he pointed out. “Even if it was, it’s now been well and truly bandaged up, so you’re good to go.” He rolled it over, bent down, and quickly put the tire back on.
She watched his skill and his strength as he managed to put on the lugs.
And then he stood up. “Hang on. I’ll go get something to tighten these up.”
“Like what?”
“A power tool.” He went over to his garage, right beside her, and opened it. Her bedroom was right here on his side of the house. That just brought back her memories about being woken up last night.
When he returned and finished putting on the tire, she heard the kids coming up the driveway.
She turned to see them racing toward her to see if she’d gotten it fixed.
They were whooping with joy. “Now you can thank our neighbor,” she told the twins.
As he introduced himself, they were all grins as they thanked him for putting the vehicle back together again.
Of course Toby was in grand style, saying, “Now maybe we won’t starve tonight.”
Devon rolled her eyes at that. “Yes, now that we have wheels again, we can go grocery shopping.”
Camden burst out laughing. “Nothing quite like imagining you’ll be starving forever.”
Toby held his stomach in mock horror. “Can you imagine anything worse? I’ve been thinking about it all day.”
She knew perfectly well that any cop could imagine all kinds of worse things, but, for a ten-year-old, the thought of a grocery shortage was nothing short of horrific.
“I’m sure you guys have homework, so, if you go get started on that,” Devon began, “I can go see what I can roust up for groceries.”
“Did you get paid then?” Toby asked, looking at her in delight.
She shook her head. “No, payday’s not for another few days.”
He frowned and wondered out loud, “But how can you buy groceries?”
“I’ll put it on the card,” she admitted, embarrassed that Camden was listening in. “And when I get paid, I can pay off the card.” Toby frowned, obviously not liking it. She reached out, tapped him on the shoulder, and added, “Toby, it’s fine. There will be food.”
He looked relieved, yet still worried.
She smiled at him. “No matter what you say, I haven’t let you starve yet. So quit worrying that I’ll do it now.”
“Maybe not.” He rolled his eyes at her and added, “However, it’s been close. It’s been really, really close.”
With that, she gasped and made what appeared to be a threatening move toward him.
He bolted backward, laughing and calling out to her, “Make sure you buy lots. I’m starving.” She rolled her eyes at his antics, smiled over at Camden, and pointed at her patched tire. “Thank you so much. And, if you ever need something I can help with, just let me know. Really.”
He smiled, then nodded. “I think you’re the one who’ll need help, … especially with that one.” He nodded toward the house, where Toby had disappeared into.
“Yeah, that one and his twin sister,” Devon clarified.
“One’s bad enough, but together? The two of them are definitely a handful.
” She groaned, pushed a few loose tendrils of hair behind her ears.
“But at least he’s honest. In his mind, they’ve been on the verge of starving the whole time they’ve been with me. ”
Camden burst out laughing at that. “I don’t think he has that much to worry about, but I get your drift. If you need a hand with anything else, just let me know. I don’t mind being called on to help out when necessary.”
She smiled and nodded. “It’s that when necessary thing that’s always a challenge. By the way, do you ever get … I probably shouldn’t even say anything.”
“Go ahead.”
“Trespassers, people loitering in the area, or walking through the yards or anything?”
He stopped, turned, then frowned at her. “No, never.”
“Oh.” She wished she hadn’t brought it up now. She started backing up toward her house.
“Why? Did you see somebody?”
She frowned. “I don’t know. I’ve just heard a couple strange noises.” She shook her head. “So, I thought maybe somebody came into the house, thinking maybe nobody lived here. I don’t know. I mean, when I got downstairs to see who it was, they were gone.”
He just stared at her for a long moment. “So, let me get this straight. You thought somebody was in the house, so you came downstairs to check it out?”
“Yes, of course,” she replied, frowning at him. “What else am I supposed to do? I’ve got two kids here. I can’t just not check out things if there’s a potential problem.”
“Of course,” he muttered.
But she could see that he didn’t like her answer at all.
“The next time you think somebody is in the house, could you just give me a call instead?”
She stared at him, not sure what to make of it. “Why?”
He frowned as he looked back at the house, then at her. “Because I’m a cop and because I’ve seen way-too-many scenarios where what you just described turned into something very ugly,” he muttered. “So please, if you think you hear something, just call me.”
She hated to think about it—then she hated to think about a lot of things, like the floating head.
Camden continued. “If you really think something’s going on, get you and the kids out of that house, come over to my place, and we’ll call for backup.” And, with that, he raised a hand and returned to his house, leaving her staring after him in shock.
*
Camden tried but couldn’t forget what she had shared. Finally, he gave up and headed to his computer to check his security cameras.
He had one that showed the best view of her place, which still wasn’t a whole lot.
However, it did give him a view of a bit of the one side of her house closest to his.
As he studied and fast-forwarded through the previous evening, he couldn’t see anything.
Relieved at that, he continued through his recorded tapes into this morning and found nothing.
If there had been an incident, it must have been on the other side of the house, which he had no access to see, or she was just getting used to the new place. He could only hope that’s what it was. But he also knew that the house had a few quirks, and they weren’t necessarily easy to explain.
Not that he was given to any scare tactics or anything, but absolutely some issues went on in this world. In her case, anything that happened to a single mom with two kids alone in a house at night was not good. That was guaranteed.
After verifying that his security cameras showed nothing, he sat back for a minute, then went outside and redirected one of them so it would see a little more of her property, hoping he would catch sight if something was going on.
He didn’t really have any reason to doubt or to disbelieve what she had told him though.