Page 35 of Always Be My Baby

“That… That’s amazing,” Lee said. “Thank you, Officer Dombrowski, for calling us.”

“You should know, a B and E with destruction of property charge is the bigger offense.”

“That’s great, right?” I asked.

“Well,” he answered, “it certainly won’t hurt. Given that he did thousands of dollars’ worth of damage to your home and property.”

“Thank you for calling us,” I said before hanging up, then I turned to Lee. “Another thing down. We’re going to get our normal back. I can feel it.”

“I can’t wait.”

Marilee

As it turned out, Girard was perfectly wrong about us getting back to normal. Two days after the call from Officer Dombrowski, we were getting ready to take Floyd to the dog park. I picked up my purse, and my phone to stick in my pocket. That was when I noticed a Facebook message.

Those little numbers that popped up in the corner of the apps drove me right out of my mind. I’d tried once to ignore the numbers. That time it was on my email. I let it get up to 150 and practically had a nervous breakdown, unable to think about anything else until I’d cleared them all out. Never again. I clicked on the app to see my notification.

Then I clicked on the notification because Ihadto click on it. Why, one might ask? Because the message was from one Darren Bell,my father.

I didn’t want to tell Girard because I didn’t want to ruin our day. We were heading out to have fun before we went into work. Fun with Girard. That was what I decided to focus on, shoving the message out of my head as best I could.

We hooked Floyd to the lead and Girard helped him up into the truck, buckling him in. From there we headed to the big dog park in La Rue. La Rue was the same town we’d visited to see the snow sculptures back in December. That had been our first “official” date, though I’d already been spending time with him at his place and mine. La Rue was known for their parks, as they boasted several of them. For strolling. For playing on jungle gyms. For camping. And even for letting your dog roam.

And I tried to be in the moment, I really did. That damn message from my father kept weighing on me.

Girard held my hand as we walked through the snow to let Floyd get his exercise in.

“Penny for your thoughts?” Girard asked. “You’ve been distracted since we left the house today.”

“I…” No use trying to deny it. He knew me better than anyone else in the whole world. “And here I thought I was hiding it so well.”

He snickered at me. “Well, the thing is…” He started, arching his eyebrow slyly my way. “what were you trying to hide?”

“I received a Facebook message from my father.”

Girard stopped abruptly in his tracks, grabbing my arm to stop me, too, as he gasped, “What?” There went the sly, teasing mood from a moment ago. I knew that would happen, hence menotwanting to tell him about it now.

“I’m sorry. I received it right before we left the house, and I didn’t tell you sooner because I didn’t want to ruin our day.”

“Lee, sweetheart… you don’t owe me an explanation. But I don’t want you thinking that you have to deal with that shit by yourself.”

When Girard cursed, I always paid attention because he rarely did it. “I know,” I said. “And I love you for saying so.”

“So…” He paused to shoot me one of his heart melting grins. “What did that asshole have to say?”

“Get this, he just said he needed to talk to me. After twenty years. No, ‘hello.’ No, ‘hey, how have you been?’ No, ‘I’m sorry.’”

“Did you expect anything more?” he asked, and he didnotsound happy about it. I shook my head because no, not from Darren Bell. “You think it has something to do with Lachlan?”

“I think it haseverythingto do with Lachlan.”

Floyd took off after a bird that landed in the snow just ahead of us. Although we were squarely into March, we still had plenty of the fluffy white stuff on the ground. It was deep enough to go up to Floyd’s knees, causing him to gallop instead of run.

“You going to respond?” Girard asked.

“I don’t know. Part of me wants to pretend I never saw the message, but then part of me wants to lay into him for being such an asshole.”

“Well, I agree with the second part, in case you wanted to know.”

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