Page 13 of Due North
His nod was once and precise, which told me more than his words ever could. “What about Poppy’s father? Is there any chance he could come back and try to take her from us … err … you?” he asked, backtracking on his faux pas.
My hand stilled on his arm, and I rubbed it unconsciously to calm him. “You can call Poppy ours. In just a few short days, she’s become part of the family at Bison Ridge. I’ll be forever grateful for how accepting everyone was without even blinking. It was like a blanket was wrapped around us that brought us into the fold. I can’t describe it any other way, but I know if something happened to me, Dawn, Heaven, or Amity would take over her care.”
“Without a doubt,” he agreed.
“As far as Poppy’s father goes, no, my sister doesn’t even know who he was.”
“Yikes,” he said, his gaze darting to me for a second. “Was Allie using drugs at the time?”
“No, she wasn’t. She was out at a party alone. She woke up in a room, aware she’d been drugged and sexually abused. By whom was the question.”
“She got pregnant from a sexual assault?” he asked, holding his breath for what he already knew was the answer but needed confirmation.
“Yeah, she did,” I said on an exhale. “By the time she told me about the party, it was too late to go the ER for a rape kit. By the time she found out she was pregnant, she was already five months along. She refused to give Poppy up for adoption, though. She said Poppy was more hers than anyone else’s, and she’d raise her as such. I was there to help her the first year of Poppy’s life, but once she was in daycare and my sister had found a good job, I took the position at Heavenly Lane. It offered me the flexibility to see them frequently but not smother them.”
“Wow, that’s not what I was expecting,” he admitted as we turned down the road toward Bison Ridge. “We never knew you had a family. I don’t know how you snuck that past us for years.”
I ran my hands over my thighs and stared at the floor of the truck. “I always try to keep my personal life separate from business, and I didn’t see them as much as I should have, which is clear to me now. Honestly, I think she started doing drugs to deal with the assault. I wanted her to get counseling, but she refused. She said she didn’t need it, but I could see her starting to fray at the edges after Poppy was born. I did as much as I could to help, but …”
“But you can’t help someone who doesn’t want help,” he finished for me. “I know this story well, Cece. You can’t make someone do something, even if it’s in their best interest. I’m sorry, that had to be hard to watch knowing she was spiraling into drugs.”
“That’s the weird part about it,” I said, leaning against the door so I could watch him as he drove. I was still worried about his eye, but he was facing the wrong way, so I couldn’t tell if it was still drooping. “Once Poppy was a few months old, Allie started to improve. I chalked it up to postpartum depression and didn’t think more of it until a few months ago. She had a good job and had found Poppy a daycare where they taught her sign language. I got a phone call from the director about three months ago asking me about Poppy’s back daycare bills. My sister wasn’t paying the daycare, and if she didn’t pay the three months she owed, they weren’t going to keep Poppy anymore. Afraid for the baby, I paid her right on the phone. When I went to see my sister to talk to her about it, she said she thought she had paid. Now I see she was spending the money on drugs. She promised she’d pay me back, but at the time, I told her not to worry about it. I wanted to help her with Poppy as much as I could, so I told her to buy the baby what she needed for winter instead.”
“But she didn’t.”
“Nope,” I said, shaking my head. “I had to buy Poppy a new car seat because I went to pick her up one day and hers was missing. Allie told me it broke, and she couldn’t get to the store to buy another one because she couldn’t take Poppy out without one. That made sense, so I ran and got the one she’s in now.”
“What do you think happened to it?”
“I would guess she traded it for drugs.”
“A car seat for drugs?” he asked, his voice disbelieving.
“Drug dealers have kids too. Poppy’s seat was worth almost five hundred dollars because it was designed for a child with her kind of head instability.”
He glanced at me sharply. “Does Poppy need another one? We’ll get her one if she does.”
I squeezed his arm for a second and smiled. “You’re sweet, but no, she’s fine now. She needed it when she was younger, but now she’s old enough to use a standard seat. I guess what I’m saying is, I should have seen the signs, but I didn’t.”
“Yes, you did,” he said, his head nodding.
“Okay, I saw the signs, but I missed the point of them. I will struggle with that until the day I die.”
His laughter was sarcastic and ugly when it filled the cab. “You and me both, sweetheart.”
He yanked the truck into the driveway of Heavenly Lane, threw it into park, climbed out, and walked away. That was the last I saw of Caleb North for the rest of the day.
Five
There was a knock on the door, and I sighed when I pulled the door open. Heaven stood on the doorstep, a smile on her face. “Hey,” she said, pushing past me to sit on the couch. I closed the door and walked over to her, lowering myself to the sofa as well. She patted my leg once before she spoke. “How are you doing?”
“I’m fine. You didn’t have to come over here, Miss Heaven. I could have met you at the house.”
Her brow dipped down to her nose. “We talked about the miss thing, remember, Tex?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I answered obediently.
“I don’t want to be a ma’am either,” she said, gently shoulder bumping me. “There sure have been a lot of changes here since we hired you.”
