Page 49 of Back To Our Beginning

Damn, I was blushing again.

Beau was already at the table, and T.J. was wiping it down by the time I got there. Beau had my chair already pushed back for me, and he was kicked back in his. I noticed that he’d taken the one with his back to the wall. Drake had once told me he always liked to see if someone was coming at him. It must be a military thing.

By the time I sat down, T.J. was setting down our warmed pastries.

“Alice is backed up. Your drinks will take longer. Sorry.”

“No problem, T.J.” I smiled at him. He blushed. T.J. was a high school student who always blushed if an older woman smiled at him. Therefore, working for Ruby, he was perpetually lit up like sunrise.

Beau broke off a piece of his scone and popped it into his mouth.

“Damn, this is really good.” He looked surprised.

“Told you.”

He broke off another piece and ate that, too. Then he gave me a long look.

“How come social work? You always had a dream of being an interpreter. I remember how you worked so hard studying French in high school, and all those Pell grants and scholarships you applied for so you could attend ETSU.

“Go Buccaneers,” I said, raising my hand.

Beau chuckled. “Did you go to many football games?”

“Of course I did. I was a student, wasn’t I?”

“So, you got the scholarships?”

I nodded. “And the Pell grants. I didn’t have to take out many student loans. I paid those off in two years. I was lucky.”

“What happened to the dream of being an interpreter for the United Nations?”

“My roommate was studying to become a social worker. Some classes she was taking really resonated with me. Especially the one called Human Behavior in the Social Environment. When I read her text, I decided to take the class.”

“Yeah, but interpreter to social worker is quite the shift,” Beau said as T.J. set down our drinks. The kid left before I could even thank him, so I turned my attention back to Beau.

“It was, but I thought about how different my family’s life would have been if a good social worker would have become involved. How they could have helped us, and maybe Piper wouldn’t have been hurt so badly by our father.”

Beau winced and set down his coffee that he was about to drink. “I forgot about that.”

“Yeah, Drake tried to shield all of us from that. He told Trenda and Evie what really happened, but I heard. That’s why he had to join the Navy. At least our dad had to go to prison.”

Beau reached out and covered my hand and squeezed. It wasn’t much, but it helped me as I thought about that horrible time in our family’s life.

I needed to change the subject. “What about you? Why did you join the Marines? Why didn’t you tell me you were just going to up and leave?”

Beau didn’t let go of my hand. He looked me dead in the eye.

“You know that I never even considered college. It always seemed so unattainable for me. I barely scraped by enough to graduate. I wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed.”

I turned my hand over and tangled my fingers with his, squeezing him hard.

“For God’s sake, Beau, you could barely attend high school, not when you were taking care of your mom.”

“Yeah, but even when I did, I struggled.”

“Again, how were you supposed to succeed when you missed so many classes?”

Beau gave me a sad smile and released my hand and took a sip of his coffee. “You always were my biggest fan. As for the Marines. I talked to the recruiter, and he convinced me that there I could succeed. There I could find a family.”