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Helen laughed as she followed me back to my office and away from the prying ears eager to pick up gossip wherever they found it. “I’ll bet this situation with Lonnie and her little boyfriend didn’t help things between you.”
Mara’s hateful gaze from last night flashed in my mind and I heard her angry words all over again. She thought I hadn’t changed at all, still blamed me for something I had nothing to do with and judged me based on that. “It didn’t, but I have rules and I need to follow them.”
“You do, of course, you do,” she agreed easily with a sympathetic smile. “But she paid a heavy price for someone else allegedly following the rules, which entitles her to her opinion.”
“But I didn’t know!”
“You knew what you both did, and that it was wrong. Against the law and all that, right?” I nodded. “Someone had to pay for it and you were in a position of privilege that allowed you to pay in community service hours. You finished your hours with a clean record that allowed you to get into the Army and then law enforcement.”
And Mara had been denied that, because of me. “She’ll hate me forever, won’t she?” We’d been making progress, I was sure of it. Until last night.
Helen shrugged. “Why do you care what she thinks? It’s been years since you knew one another.”
Why? “Mara was the first girl I ever loved, hell, she’s the only girl I’ve ever loved.”
Her nod was thoughtful, her smile kind. “Maybe you ought to try loving someone else?” There was no bite to her suggestion, and the small smirk made me believe she was screwing with me. Or worse, testing me.
“I can’t, and more than that, I don’t want to. I want Mara. I’ve always wanted her. No one but her.”
“You sure this isn’t just misplaced guilt?”
“I’m certain. I wanted another chance with her before I found out what happened to her.” At Helen’s skeptical look, I sighed and leaned forward on my elbows. “We’ve been living in the same town for close to three years, but I only found out about everything just a few weeks ago, because she refused to speak to me for all that time.”
Helen whistled. “She is a stubborn little thing. Been hurt too many times to trust in anything. Or anyone.”
“She’s stubborn as hell, but that doesn’t change the fact that I want her.”
Helen gifted me with another assessing look and nodded. “Then let me offer you a bit of advice. Try to see things from Mara’s perspective. Right or wrong, you have to understand that she sees this all as history repeating itself, which I imagine is quite the reminder why you can’t be trusted. On top of all that, you are now the law.”
“So my job is another strike against me?”
“In a way, yes. You don’t care about Lonnie’s future, not really. You have your rules to follow.”
“I do care. About every damn citizen in this town.” The idea that I didn’t was offensive as hell.
“Yet you’re prepared to send her back to a house where’s being neglected at best, abused at worse. Because of procedure.” She held up a hand to stop my defense. “You’re just doing your job, I know. But we’re looking at things through Mara’s eyes.”
“But it’s based on a lie.”
“Is it? Do you know why Mara came to me to help out this girl?”
I shook my head. “No. She’s been worried about her since she stopped coming into the bakery, I assumed she called you to put the fear of god into me.”
“No, she asked for my help because she’s adamant she doesn’t want Lonnie to end up like her.”
I blinked at those words, shocked to my core. “But Mara is great.” She was smart and tough, baked like she was born to do it, and no one in town had a bad word to say about her.
Helen laughed and her shoulders relaxed. “She’s more wonderful than she knows, but her life was changed forever by that time in the back of a car. She wants more than that for this girl and, good or bad, you are an obstacle to that.”
“I’m not an obstacle, but Lonnie hasn’t made any official allegations of abuse or neglect.”
“Isn’t it against the law not to report a ward of the state missing?” Her cocked brows told me I’d made another mistake, one I might not be able to come back from in Mara’s eyes. “She didn’t report it because it won’t matter. They’ll send her back and then she’ll be marked as trouble, bouncing from home to home until she ages out of the system. What will that do for her prospects of graduating high school never mind college?”
“I…don’t know.”
“And that is why she sees you as an obstacle. It’s not personal, but you are part of the system, one she still believes doesn’t care about kids like her and Lonnie.”
