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“Yeah. That’d be good. I could use some time out of the house.”
“Same, man. Oh, and thanks for the assist. Careful the Chief doesn’t see you. He’ll try to recruit you away from the fire station.”
“If the town council keeps carving at the budget, I might be hitting him up.”
I laughed because I knew Austin would never leave the firehouse. But that was the one drawback of a small town. We might be growing, but the firehouse was originally built with volunteerism as its base.
The older firemen were aging out, and the younger guys wanted a steady paycheck, not more work on top of doing a forty-hour week at a day job.
“Yeah, our budget pulls from the same pool, remember? We don’t even have enough squad cars half the time, between mechanical issues and whatnot.” I shook my head. “And that’s with a smaller force. Can’t wait until the Chief hires more officers.”
Austin laughed. “Fun everywhere, man.”
“Ain’t that the truth. Catch ya later.”
Austin nodded and I went back to the bench where I’d left my sketch pad. A duckling was sitting on top of it.
“You better not shit on that, bird.”
As I got closer, I noticed that the fuzzy bird wasn’t quite a duckling. Evidently, teens were going to be my problem for the day all around. “Can I have that back?”
It quacked at me.
“How about a bribe?” I toed open the hidden compartment of corn stashed next to each of the benches. It stopped people from feeding bread to the ducks, which actually wasn’t good for them.
When the duck quacked louder, I tossed corn on the ground and he or she hopped off my sketchbook. Luckily for me, there were no additional duck droppings.
Then again, I guess I’d have to get used to shit in my life with a baby on the way.
I grabbed my pad and hurried up the hill toward Main Street. Hopefully, I could still catch Van at the bakery.
She was just swinging out the door as I was crossing the street.
“Pocket Plus!”
She turned at my voice, a little harried. “I gotta head to Tab’s.”
“No, what you need to do is eat. I bet you haven’t had lunch today.”
“I…ate.” She wouldn’t look at me.
“A pack of Ritz crackers doesn’t count.”
She blew out a breath and crossed her arms over her middle, then she lowered her voice. “It settles my stomach.”
“And now?”
“Okay, I could eat. Pancakes maybe?”
“Pancakes it is.” I urged her forward with a hand at her lower back. “How are you doing?”
She shrugged. “Fine. Presley doesn’t believe in sleep, so we’re all tired.”
“From what I read, it could take some time to get on a schedule.”
“Read?” She tipped up her head to look at me as we walked. “What are you reading?”
“The book. You know,” I lowered my voice, “the baby bible.”
