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“I can’t. Can’t stop. I won’t. I won’t leave you. Not this, not us. You’re the best thing about my life, do you know that? Both of you. I love you so much.”
Natalie hugs me hard, and the relief of having her safe, back with us, and she’s not hurt… the relief is so huge I start to cry.
It’s several moments later when I realize what they were trying to tell me.
“Uh.” Drying my eyes on Natalie’s shoulder discreetly, I lift my head just enough to look at Nic. “Are they still watching?”
“Yeah,” he says, his expression full of cautious humor.
“Did I say…”
“Yeah.”
“So they know…”
“Oh, yeah.”
I take a deep breath.
“You okay with that?” I ask, feeling weaker than I’ve ever felt in my life. Natalie blinks up at me through her own tears. Nods. Nic looks between us, his chin rising, a small smile on his face. He nods.
“Okay, then.” I get to my feet, offering them each a hand. Even when they’re up, I don’t let go. “Here we go.”
33
NIC
A couple of weeks later…
Aknock sounds on the door. Looking up from my temporary desk at Legal Aid, I see Reggie and his younger siblings hovering in the hall just behind him.
“Hey, guys. Come on in.” I wave them over, pointing at the seats in front of the desk. The office is tiny, but it’s not the first time we’ve made this work.
They file into the room, but Reggie shakes his head at the chairs.
“We’re on our way back to the ’burbs,” he says, wrapping an arm around his little brother’s shoulders. Jason is the youngest of the three and has always been shy around me. Kid’s got good reason to be. I can’t imagine having my life upended like theirs has been.
“What can I do for you?” I close the computer in front of me. It’s just about the end of my day anyway.
“We wanted to say thank you,” says Jenny quietly.
I blink up at them.
“Since Mom and Dad—” Reggie clears his throat. “Since the accident, nothing has gone the way it was supposed to. Everything sucked.”
“Obviously,” says Jenny. Reggie makes a face at her.
“I mean, more than it had to. Everything was more complicated, and nothing went the right way the first time,” he explains. I know what he’s talking about. Guardianship had been an issue, and if you’re a kid, even a mostly grown kid like Reggie, where you live affects every other facet of your life. They’d been in a constant state of upheaval for months until we got them settled.
“But you helped,” says Jason, speaking for the first time.
“I’m glad I could,” I tell him honestly. I smile at him.
“We just wanted to say thank you ourselves,” says Jenny, sounding far more mature than her fourteen years. “For everything you did to help.”
Reggie shakes my hand. When Jason stretches up to his full twelve-year-old height to do the same, my throat gets tight.
They don’t linger after that, but they leave a mark. Finn had told me all those weeks ago that his own family might not have suffered so much if they’d had someone like me to go to bat for them. If I can spare Reggie and Jenny and Jason the same kind of hardship… there aren’t many reasons I’d volunteer my free time. This is definitely one of them.
