Page 8 of Night By Night
Coffee.
That was one thing he’d made sure he unpacked last night—the coffeemaker. He didn’t have any milk, but he still had some powdered creamer, so that’d have to do.
He got it prepped and stood there waiting with his travel mug ready while it brewed. He usually didn’t take sugar in it, something Lois used to tease him about—
He sucked in a sharp, shaky breath as the memory of her laugh slammed into him.
This isn’t fucking fair. We finally made it, sis, and you should be here with us.
She’d missed JJ’s first day of school last fall. Missed Trick or Treating with them last year.
Missed more than one Christmas now, not that they’d had fancy Christmases. Hell, last Christmas they wouldn’t even have had a tree had the guy across the hall from them—whose apartment perpetually reeked of weed and whom Hank was nearly certain was a drug dealer—not given them a three-foot pre-lit tree and three boxes of el cheapo ornaments three days before Christmas.
The guy had apparently overheard JJ’s conversation with another of their neighbors while Hank had been checking the mail in the building’s lobby. She’d asked JJ if they were ready for Santa and had their tree up and everything. Before Hank could scoop JJ into his arms and head upstairs, she’d told the woman no, that it wasn’t in their budget.
Because Hank didn’t lie to her. He wanted her to understand she wasn’t being punished, but that Daddy had to spend a lot of money to keep her safe, and that Christmas had to be about spending it with each other, not about stuff. Hank had also promised JJ Santa wouldn’t forget her, and he had secretly managed to buy her a couple of presents from her list.
But two hours later, there’d been a knock on their door. When Hank looked, he’d found the stuff sitting there in their doorway, and across the hall the guy gave him a smile and thumbs-up as he was closing his own door.
Hank brought everything inside, got JJ started putting it together, and had a quick cry in the bathroom.
Once the tree was decorated, he’d had JJ get her crayons and showed her how to fold a piece of paper to make a card, neatly wroteThank you, and Merry Christmas!inside it for her in ink, and then let her decorate and color it.
Then he carried her across the hall and they knocked on his door and gave it to him.
Christmas morning, there’d been another knock on their door. Hank had opened it to find presents not just from weed guy, but apparently from most of their building.
You couldn’t convince him Santa didn’t exist, even if maybe he reeked of weed.
It’d taken them a week for JJ to make thank you cards for everyone, but she did it.
Just because it was a shitty building and a crappy neighborhood didn’t mean their neighbors were horrible. That’d been the only good thing about living there.
The tree, ornaments, and cards from everyone were some of the keepsakes also boxed up in the great room, along with photo albums and pictures. Like hell would he leave them behind. They were a reminder of the good in humanity, something he’d desperately needed after everything they’d been through.
A journey he’d mostly made alone, because he did everything possible to shield JJ from the worst of the reality. Thankfully, she hadn’t actually seen Lois get shot. When Cameron had shown up, Lois had quickly handed JJ off to Marla and Barry and asked them to take her into the restaurant, and they had.
That’s when they’d heard the shots.
Barry grabbed JJ from Marla and they both ran, Barry half-dragging Marla by the hand through the restaurant and out a door on the other side, to go hide in a store next door. There’d been a cop sitting in his cruiser in the drive-thru. He’d heard the shots and immediately taken Cameron down, shooting him in the shoulder.
Too bad he didn’t kill the fucker.
Hank dug his knuckles into his eyes and rubbed away his tears.
I should have been there with her.
Then again, as everyone told him—including the prosecutor—had he been there, maybe both of them would have been dead, and then who would be raising JJ?
He drew in a shaky breath, held it, and blew it out again. He couldn’t afford to take any time off to recover from this move. Hell, he hadn’t taken a day “off” in over three months. When he wasn’t working or taking care of JJ, he’d been hustling to work some under-the-table home repair jobs and sell everything he could to bank as much money as possible for the move. He’d worked his last day on Friday, spent that night and Saturday morning loading the trailer, and then they left Pennsylvania for good late Saturday morning and he’d driven straight through.
He needed a paycheck, and he wouldn’t get his first one from his new job for two weeks. Right now he had less than two hundred dollars in his checking account. His last paycheck from his previous job would hit his account via direct deposit by Wednesday. At least his bank was a national one, with a couple of branches in the Sarasota area, so that was one less thing to worry about.
Once that check hit, it would give him almost a thousand dollars in the bank, total, because he hadn’t worked a full pay period the last week at his job.
It was also all the money he had in the world, because he’d paid out the first, last, and security deposit on this place, the electricity and water deposits, and the deposit for the Internet service. Fuck, he couldn’t even afford a cable package right now. Thankfully, he had a Fire TV Stick and Netflix, and JJ knew how to find her favorite shows on that.
He’d have to pay to switch the license plate on the truck, and get a Florida driver’s license, but that could wait a couple of weeks. He also had his cell bill and auto insurance coming due. At least the truck was paid off and in decent shape. He took a risk by only having collision on it, but it saved him an extra hundred a month.
