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Like with every other call we had to discuss business, my adoptive mom and boss cut through the formalities and got straight to the point. “Destiny arrived safely at her father’s?”
“Yup,” I replied, still debating if I should tell her about the visit or if I should keep it to myself. Knowing Darcy, she’d most likely ask me questions I wasn’t prepared to answer.
“Any problems?”
Obviously, Darcy was also a mind reader.
Damn it.
Other than I’d like to climb Destiny’s dad like a tree while berating him for not knowing about his daughter? Absolutely not. I cleared my suddenly dry throat and croaked out, “No. Everything went well. I did a quick home inspection, got a list of names of who lives there, and will follow up with another visit in two weeks.” How I’d been able to say everything with a straight face, I couldn’t say. “However, he seemed taken aback. We might want to schedule a DNA test to prove he’s the dad. He didn’t know the mother was pregnant.”
“Did he say he wasn’t?”
I thought about my interaction with Hunter, and realized he never said either way. It was almost like he accepted everything I threw at him as truth and didn’t bother to question me. “No, he didn’t. It was how he worded some things. Like he referred to Destiny as Hope’s baby. After I told him Hope had passed away, he admitted he was Destiny’s father. It was just an odd interaction.”
That was an understatement.
“Chances are he was in shock, Posey. It can take a while to process the fact a man has a child, and the mother of the child is dead.” There wasn’t an ounce of censure in Darcy’s voice. “Was this the first time you had to inform a new parent the mother or father of the child was deceased?”
I shook my head, then remembered Darcy couldn’t see me. “I did it one other time. I was so nervous, I couldn’t tell you how anything went down.”
“It’s never easy to relay the information. Even if the parents are no longer together. At one point, they had a relationship, otherwise there wouldn’t be a child. Even if they broke up, the parent left behind can never receive any type of closure. Mr. Banks will never know why Hope kept silent about his daughter. Combined with her death, and that he’s now responsible for a baby on his own... It’s a lot to take in.”
Ugh...
If I didn’t know better, I’d swear Darcy somehow knew about the contemptuous meeting between me and Hunter—er—Mr. Banks. I needed to keep things purely professional with him. Referring to him by a formal name would be the start.
The guilt from earlier reared its ugly head again. My gut turned with nausea as I turned the corner. Darcy was right. I’d laid a lot of information at Mr. Bank’s feet in a short time. Everyone handled grief differently.
I had no clue what to say, so I finally uttered, “It is.”
“Are you on the way back to the office?”
I never felt more grateful for a topic change than now. “Yes, ma’am. I’m about ten or fifteen minutes out.”
“Good. We just got another case and I know you’re currently at your max in cases, but considering this handoff with Destiny went so well, I’d like you to take this one if you’re comfortable with your caseload.”
I couldn’t help myself. I smiled. Another reason I respected Darcy as a boss. She never demanded any of us to take any case. She asked and always gave us an out if we choose not to take the assignment. I also knew Darcy was methodical in how she reviewed a case and assigned them to us. Her reasons were always the correct ones.
Our caseloads would always be heavy. It was the nature of the beast, unfortunately. Destiny was in the best hands and at the right house. If I took the case Darcy had for me, I didn’t believe it would interfere with anything involving the Banks family.
“I’ll take it,” I said.
Darcy gave me some background on the family, then said she would explain the rest when I got to the office. Once I ended the call, I made a quick stop at the local convenience store for gas. I had a feeling I’d be burning the midnight oil, and I didn’t want to worry about getting it when it was late.
Single girl problems for the win!
Of course, while I was there, I couldn’t resist running in to get my favorite brand of soda to have with my lunch. At least that was my excuse when I came out with not one but two of the red-labeled drink. My only defense was they were on sale, and I’d need a caffeine boost for sure.
Boy, was that an understatement. By the time I returned to the office, Darcy handed off the case, and I hit the ground running. I ate my meager lunch in the car while reading over the file, then went into the courthouse to petition the court on the child’s behalf as their new caseworker, since the family had been in the system with a different worker a year ago.
Then I had to meet the child. It was never fun for me to visit a school. One, parents who were there sometimes got paranoid and two, the children were often afraid of me, especially if they knew I was there for them. The child in question this time was a fourteen-year-old girl. After reading over her case, I knew who did most of the abuse, and I understood before I left the guidance office what I had to do.
Remove the child, even if the child had run away from home.
Which also meant stopping by the police department to have an arrest warrant placed on the father for sexual and physical abuse of a minor and one for the mother for allowing the father to hurt her child. These two pieces of shit made all the other parents look like spun gold, as far as I was concerned.
By the time I pulled into my apartment complex, it was a little after midnight, and I was beat.
