Keeping them safe, p.21
Keeping Them Safe, page 21
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Keep reading for an excerpt from A Foster Mother’s Promise by Ruth Logan Herne.
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A Foster Mother’s Promise
by Ruth Logan Herne
Chapter One
Deputy Mike Morris climbed out of his SUV and surveyed his new surroundings, a visual that looked nothing like what he usually encountered in his big-city investigator work back in Nashville.
He was literally tucked between a rock and a hard place as the Smokies rose and rolled around him while the farms and forests surrounding the small town of Kendrick Creek sat in the valley below.
Silence enveloped him.
Mike hated silence.
It left too much time to think. To question. To remember why he’d left the city.
He breathed deep but the quiet of the trees, the rise of the mountains and the roll of the hills oozed tranquility. Too much tranquility, enough to make him rethink his decision. Why was he here? Why had a decorated precinct commander left the job he loved to take a trial position with a rural sheriff’s department?
Not to heal his heart. That was a no-go. But a change of scenery and—
Screams and shouts from across the rural road shattered his thoughts.
He raced that way.
He knew the sound of fear when he heard it. Every cop did. He zeroed in on the direction.
Go left.
He withdrew his firearm quietly. Only a fool walked into an unknown situation unprepared, and with over twenty years of law enforcement under his belt, Mike was no one’s fool.
The screams came again. Then again.
Figures darted this way and that through the trees behind the house. He didn’t have a clean line of sight, so he crept around the edge of a roadside stand of trees.
A woman lay in the grass. Unmoving. Beautiful. Honey-blond hair, tanned skin. Possibly injured or dead.
He didn’t hesitate. He rushed to her side to make a quick assessment and saw no visible wounds.
He bent and put two fingers against her neck to check for a pulse.
She screamed.
He may have, too, because she went from being dead to being quite alive and scared to death.
“It’s okay.” He tucked the firearm back into his waistband and put his hands up. “I’m one of the good guys. I heard the screams and came to help.”
“Good guys don’t frighten a woman to death in her own front yard.” She’d scooched away when she shrieked and stayed crouched in the grass as she eyed him with cool suspicion. “And I promise you, I have lived here for years and there is no one within hearing distance of my screams, and rarely a passerby, so try again.”
She was a smart aleck, but then, he had come at her with a gun. To save her life, so he still wasn’t completely wrong. “I’m Deputy Mike Morris. I’m moving into the house across the street.”
Disbelief deepened her features. She stood, refusing his hand out to help, and gazed at him then at the road. “The Littletons aren’t coming back?”
“No. It’s just me.”
Her frown made him wonder if he should have reconsidered his options before accepting the temporary assignment with the sheriff’s department here in Cocke County. He would wear the uniform of a deputy for the next three months. The county was going to need a new sheriff. He’d applied and been offered the job, but he’d wanted a test run first. Small-town Tennessee hadn’t been on Mike’s top ten list, and cops didn’t always take to an outsider being brought in. And yet here he was.
Two dark-haired boys raced around the corner of the house.
They slid to a stop upon seeing him.
One gulped.
One scowled.
He wasn’t sure which annoyed him more so he went with both. “Who are you and what are you doing to Jo?” demanded the first one. He was the taller of the two.
“You’re Jo?” Mike asked the woman. She tucked her shoulder-length hair behind her ears after she’d shrugged the strap of her tank top back into place. “Where’s Mom?”
The second boy’s scowl deepened. “She is our mom. Don’t you know anything?”
He knew a sassy kid when he saw one, but he bit his tongue.
“Normally, I’m Carly Bradley,” the woman explained. “But today I’m Jo in the play we’re doing.”
Now it was his turn to frown.
“I’m doing remedial reading with the boys over the summer. Instead of just reading Little Women, we were play-acting like the characters did in the book.” She must have read his confused expression. “You’ve never read Little Women?”
“The title alone supports your supposition.”
“Big, strong men don’t read books about families facing harsh times because their men went off to war? Stories of depth and warmth and sacrifice?”
“Everybody in seventh grade reads this,” said the first boy, his look of suspicion growing. “Right, Mom?”
“It’s on the list in many schools, Isaiah.”
“’Cept I shouldn’t have to do stupid seventh-grade stuff when I’m only in fifth grade and I won’t even like fifth grade at all.” The smaller boy—the scowler—drew his brows together again only this time his anger was directed at her. That made Mike want to defend her.
He didn’t.
He’d worked with a lot of kids over the years. Sometimes the less said, soonest mended adage worked best. “So y’all are all right?”
“Fine.” Bits of grass had clung to her legs. Really nice legs. She brushed the grass flakes off her knees then dusted her hands. “When are you moving in?”
“Right now.”
“Ah.” She grimaced slightly. “Are you noise-sensitive?”
“Only to people screaming, dogs barking and gunshots. Oh, and radios blaring bad music on a nice afternoon. Good music is fine. Bad music...” He did a firm thumbs-down just as a dog began barking in the house.
Then he heard another noise come through.
Crying.
A baby crying. The sound he heard in his dreams, night after night; a sound he couldn’t erase because every time he tried to help the baby, it disappeared. Even in his dreams, he couldn’t save his wife and unborn child, and that was a truth he lived with every single awful day.
“Gracie’s awake.” The bigger boy made the announcement. “Want me to get her?”
“Yes, and hurry before she goes totally ballistic.”
The baby’s cry pitched higher.
“Too late.” The younger boy sounded almost cheerful as the bigger boy dashed off, like a screaming baby was all right.
It wasn’t all right, and Mike was pretty sure that no matter what he did, where he went or who he knew, it would never be all right again. He gave her a two-finger salute before he headed back across the road.
He’d wanted something to interrupt the quiet. It surely had. Now he was wondering why he hadn’t left well enough alone.
* * *
How had a crazy handsome, overreactive, noise-sensitive jerk managed to take over the Littletons’ house that quickly? Carly wondered as she hurried inside. Bo Littleton had just gone into assisted living a few weeks ago and Alma had moved to Newport to be closer to him.
Notice you went to “crazy handsome” first. Her brain seemed amused by that. With that dark hair, gray eyes and square-jawed look you see in the chick-flick romances.
She shoved that thought aside. There was a reason she avoided feel-good movie channels.
She’d reached for that gold ring once. Epic fail. Mentally she understood that her former husband would have cheated even if she’d been a size zero. Emotionally she’d been on a mental and physical life-change diet ever since and fought the image in her mirror daily. An image she’d learned to ignore because it was never thin enough no matter what she did. Yeah, she avoided those feel-good movies on purpose.
They didn’t reflect real life, and she was a real-life kind of gal. Between raising the boys, taking on sweet baby Grace, heading up the youth football fundraising committee and dealing with whatever was happening on Isaiah’s football team, her plate was full and about to become fuller.
She would have a fourth child in her care as of tomorrow. Isaac and Isaiah’s little sister would arrive under rough circumstances. Tough for the little girl. And probably tough for them, too. Four-year-old Hannah didn’t want to be moved, but the system left few choices. Carly hoped and prayed they could smooth things over for the anxious little girl and make her feel at home.
“Hey, sweetie.” She feathered kisses over Grace’s rounded cheeks as she took her from Isaiah’s arms. “Isaiah, can you let Barney out?”
Barney was the sweet-natured mutt that had come along with the boys eighteen months before.
“Do I have to?”
She bit back a retort. Isaiah’s twelve years of life hadn’t been easy. Nor had ten-year-old Isaac’s. But the more rebellious younger brother was often the more helpful of the two and that irony wasn’t lost on her. “Yes.”
He started toward the back of the house just as Isaac came through the other way.
The dog took that moment to charge between them.
Barney was midsized, goofy, and it would have broken Isaiah’s heart to leave him behind, according to his last foster family. She’d said yes in a moment of weakness she’d been able to regret at leisure. Not because she didn’t like dogs. She did like them, but she hadn’t had time to do dog-training courses in Newport and the only fellow who’d trained dogs around Kendrick Creek had passed away in the spring.
Isaac fell and banged his arm against the doorframe.
Isaiah scooched by, ignoring his brother’s plight as Barney raced for the doggie door. He went through to the yard and started barking up a storm.
Barney rarely barked.
He liked to sit and nap and play like an overgrown puppy.
But not today.
It was as if he’d heard the deputy’s words and wanted to push the limits. “Isaac, call Barney back in, please.”
Isaac stood, frowning, and gripped his elbow. “He just went out.”
“Even so. Call him in.”
“He won’t come.” He shot her a dubious look as he rubbed away the sting. “You know he’s got to do stuff before he comes in.”
The boy made a good point. He went out the front door, letting it bang behind him. Her fault for not getting a new compressor after Barney sprang the original one a few months back.
Grace was happily feasting on her bottle. Isaiah had gone upstairs. He’d learned that seeking a little quiet time was all right. That was a victory for a boy who’d taken care of his little brother as best he could for years.
Silence reigned in the house as she settled into the rocker to feed the baby.
Not outside.
Not only was Barney barking like a coyote on a rabbit trail, Isaac had turned the garage CD player on and cranked it up, testing his limits. Knowing she was feeding the baby. Knowing what the deputy had said. Acting out intentionally to see if she’d send him away like others had done.
She wouldn’t. She was his mother now. He was here to stay. She’d completed the adoption for both boys nearly a year before.
But four kids? Could she handle that?
The music stopped mid-song.
The dog went quiet.
An odd silence reigned until the air was torn by a gunshot. In her front yard.
Her heart seized.
The baby cried out.
Isaiah raced down the stairs. The look of fright on his face broke her heart.
She jumped up, thrust Gracie into Isaiah’s arms and raced out the door.
The deputy stood there, tall, strong and stern.
Barney sat on the sidewalk like he normally did, strangely calm, and Isaac was nowhere to be seen.
And on the grass, not far from the deputy’s feet, lay a huge raccoon; one of the biggest she’d ever seen.
“You shot him.”
“Rabid, I expect. Walking drunk and snarling at the dog.”
Her gut churned.
Her chest heaved.
She’d been lamenting about the dog barking, and Isaiah’s worries, and hadn’t gotten up to see what Barney was actually barking about.
What would have happened if the raccoon had attacked Isaac or Barney? Or Gracie when she brought her out to play in the yard?
Carly broke out in a cold sweat.
Her vision swam.
Her legs went numb.
And the next thing she knew, she was on the grass—not near the raccoon—and in the deputy’s arms. For one brief moment it felt like that’s where she was meant to be. She struggled to sit then stopped when tiny dots of white light made her head swim. “What happened?”
“You fainted.”
She frowned. “Impossible.”
His skeptical expression indicated it was, in fact, quite possible.
“I don’t faint unless some medical professional comes at me with a monster-sized needle. In which case my blood pressure plummets and I go down. But it’s never happened for anything else.”
“Sudden shocks can trigger the reflex. I’ve seen it happen. The kid took off for the woods when he saw me.”
“Isaac. He’ll come back. He takes a little longer to process things than his brother.” She tried to push herself up.
He helped and then stood with her. “There wasn’t time to warn you about the shot. The dog was moving closer. Sorry about that.”
“You just saved us from a sick wild animal. Don’t apologize. Barney’s had his shots, but what if it had gotten to Isaac? How awful that would be?”
“Almost as bad as the kid’s choice in music,” the deputy noted.
He was right. This particular CD didn’t have a lot of worthy moments, but supposedly it had belonged to the boys’ mother. Isaac didn’t play it because he liked the music. He played it because of the familial connection. “I’m sorry. He tests me on everything. And just so you know, he’s had lots of practice. He’s good at it.”
“I’ve worked with a lot of kids over the years. I get it. Are you okay?”
“Yes.” She hated that her voice wavered, because she was okay. Faith had helped her make independence a life skill she took seriously.
Isaiah called from the door right then. “Mom, Gracie smells bad. Real bad.”
Diaper change time. “I’m coming, honey.”
The deputy noted the raccoon carcass. “Sounds like you’re needed. I can dispose of that. Unless your husband would rather do it.”
She kept her expression bland. “No husband. Just me and the crew.”
“Got a shovel in there?” He motioned to the garage. “If not, I expect there’s one across the road.”
“On the rack just inside the door.”
He moved that way as she headed toward the door. “Got it. Sure you’re all right, ma’am?”
“Call me Carly.”
A tiny muscle flexed his jaw. The right side. Was it practiced? Or natural? She didn’t know and wasn’t about to find out, although the slight grimace was downright attractive.
“Carly.” He stayed sober but kindly. Southern to the max. The charm aspect only made her more wary. “I’m just checking because you went down fast.”
“Thank you, but I’m fine.”
Her voice didn’t wobble and he seemed to take that as a good sign. “All right.” He grabbed the shovel as she climbed the steps.
“And thank you for doing that.”
He didn’t turn. Didn’t wink or tip a finger to his Tennessee Titans ball cap. He gave a quick wave and kept right on moving.
So did she.
Copyright © 2022 by Ruth M. Blodgett
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ISBN-13: 9780369715593
Keeping Them Safe
Copyright © 2022 by Linda Goodnight
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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