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Go on. Ask me how I fucking know.
Leaning back in my chair, I drop the receipt I’ve burned into my retinas onto the mountain of invoices covering my desk. You’d think after running my own business for six years, I’d be used to all the paperwork. The bookkeeping and invoicing, the keeping track of payroll.
No such goddamned luck.
I wasn’t built to work in an office. Service is in my blood. I grew up in a family of cops and vets. I was a cop for ten years, and I had it in my head that I would wear a badge until the day I took a bullet. That day came a hell of a lot sooner than I anticipated.
My phone rings with an incoming call somewhere beneath the stack of papers on my desk. I feel around for the device and check the caller ID before answering.
“Hey, Mare. What’s up?”
“Jonah, I need a favor.” The lack of aHellotells me this must be important. My little sister doesn’t ask for favors. More often than not, she’s the one bending over backward to help everyone else. Hell, she’s the reason I’m on my feet today.
After I got shot, Mary refused to let me sit around and fixate on everything I’d lost, not while I still had two perfectly good hands to work with. I hadn't been unemployed since I was fourteen, and there I was, at thirty years old, with no fucking clue how I was going to fill my time. Money wasn’t the problem. I had my pension, and I was willing to put in the work.
What I needed was a purpose.
I’m not going say I found my passion in construction, but with Mary’s encouragement I did find the will to get off my ass and dosomething, which eventually led to me and my oldest pal starting our own commercial and residential contracting firm.
“Are the girls okay?” I ask, referring to my nieces.
“The girls are fine. I need to rent your guestroom.”
I rest my boots on the desk. “Mare, you know you’re welcome at my place anytime, and you sure as shit don’t have to pay me.”
A dark possibility floats to the top of my mind: did my sister’s husband do something I’m going to have to dismember him for?
“Was it Kurt?” I ask through clenched teeth. “Did he cheat on you?”
“What? No! Listen, I need to borrow your guest room for a girl who used to be on my roster. She just aged out of the system and doesn’t have anywhere else to go.”
It takes me a second to realize what she’s getting at.
“You want me to take in a foster kid?”
Mary groans the way she always does when she thinks I’m not listening. “She’s not a foster kid anymore, or a kid at all for that matter. She literally turned eighteen yesterday.”
I refrain from pointing out the reality that most eighteen-year-olds barely qualify as adults. “I thought kids could stay in the system until they were twenty-one.”
“They can. She discharged herself.”
“Doesn’t that place her firmlyoutsideyour jurisdiction?” I rake a hand through my loose, shoulder-length hair. Most days I wear it back, but I’m pretty sure one or both of my nieces stole my last elastic the last time I had the family over for dinner. “Look Mare, if she doesn’t want to be in the system, then maybe you should let her go.”
“You don’t get it, Jonah. She called me. Getting this girl to say two words is like trying to squeeze water from stone, and she actuallycalledme. I can’t turn my back on her now that she’s finally reaching out.”
I swallow a heavy sigh. My little sister's always had a soft spot for lost and broken things. She thinks she can save the world, whereas I know from experience that you can only save the folks who want to be saved—and even then, there’s no guarantees.
“Don't say you don't have room,” Mary adds quickly. “You're a single guy living in a four-bedroom house. You have plenty of room.”
“Isn’t there a shelter you can send her to?”
“None of the local shelters have beds, and frankly, I don’t want her sleeping in a shelter. I’d let her stay here with us, but I completely forgot the twins are hosting a slumber party this weekend.”
“You meanyou’rehosting a slumber party this weekend.”
“Exactly.” There’s a long pause before Mary adds, “She’s pretty, Jonah.”
“Who’s pretty?”
