Page 19 of Back To Our Beginning

Oh shit, she was going to start crying. There was nothing worse than Maddie crying mad. Nothing.

“Oh, Baby, please, please, don’t cry.”

“I’m not fucking crying over you, Grady Beaumont.”

Aw fuck, she was calling me Grady.

“Let me hold you, Maddie.”

“No,” she said as I pulled her into my arms.

“And you never returned my letters. And when I tried to call you after you left, you never returned my calls.”

She was sobbing into my t-shirt. I choked up as I soaked up all the pain that I had caused my best friend. The best woman. The best person I have ever had in my life.

“I’m so sorry, Maddie. I know I didn’t write to you. I know I didn’t return your calls. Can you blame me for being scared to call you when I came back? It was better remembering us how we were than to have you reject me,” I whispered into her hair.

She continued to cry for long minutes. Finally, she whispered “If that’s your logic, then you really do need a psychiatrist.”

Chapter Five

It had taken a lot of effort for me to put last night’s conversation with Beau aside and concentrate on work, but I’d managed. And after the miserable day, I was bone tired by the time I made it home. I threw my satchel on the kitchen table and headed to the couch. I fell on it face first and finally mustered the energy to roll over.

It was after nine, and there wasn’t one site visit I made that showed promise. The worst was the three Hollister kids living with the shittiest foster parents I’d ever met. The house was filthy, and when I checked the cupboards and fridge, there was hardly anything to eat. When I questioned the kids, it was clear they were too scared to say anything bad about the Farley family. How in the hell the Farleys ever made it through the screening, I’ll never know.

What’s worse, I couldn’t say that the kids were in imminent danger, so all I could do was go to my supervisor so that another arm of DCS could investigate and determine if the Farleys were truly unsuitable to be foster parents. This was the third time I had to report a foster family, but in the other two cases the kids were in imminent danger so I got to immediately pull them out. The fact that I had to leave them there was killing me.

I considered going to my freezer and pulling out my bottle of vodka to have a double shot, but walking over there would require too much energy.

I heard the faint sound of my phone buzzing. Rolling onto my side, I looked over at my purse and gave it the evil eye. I thought I’d put my phone on do not disturb.

Most of my cases called into my office phone, but I’d given the oldest Hollister boy, ten-year-old Bobby, my cell phone number. I had to answer it.

It was when I pushed myself to a sitting position that I realized I’d plopped down on my sofa—my beautiful sofa—with my muddy boots on.

“Fuck me!” What a perfect ending to a perfect day.

With that jolt of adrenaline, I shot to my purse to grab my phone out of its designated pocket and answered.

“This is Miss Avery.”

“Hello Miss Avery. You haven’t answered any of my texts this evening. I figure you had to work late. Bad day?” The sound of Beau’s voice ran through my system like warm chocolate syrup, rich, sweet, and decadent.

“Yeah,” I sighed. “I just got home.”

“Did you ever have time to eat?”

“I found a package of Twinkies in my center console, so I was covered for lunch.”

“Are Twinkies still a thing?”

I almost smiled. “That’s blasphemy. You cannot ever speak badly about a Hostess product. I remember you partaking back in the day. I think your favorite were the cherry pies.”

“At least they had fruit.” He defended himself.

“Three cherries and unidentified red sugary filling does not constitute fruit.” Since I was up, I walked into my kitchen, pulled out the vodka, and poured a generous shot.

“Just think about the names of your choices, HoHos, Ding Dongs, and Twinkies. Just the sound of those names should have told you they were bad choices. Kind of like that guy Ted you were engaged to. All bad choices.”