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The officer, who had a badge with the last name ‘Aguilar,’ held his hand up to Sage when she tried to follow. “Just us.”
Sage’s ire was palpable as she stayed behind.
We didn’t go far.
Just far enough that we weren’t near the nurses’ station, but close enough that I could still see the room with my child in it.
My child.
Holy fuck.
“Went to the store and asked some questions,” he said without preamble. “It was brought to her attention that she’d left the child in the car. Twice.”
Anger started to boil low in my belly, making me clench.
“A couple saw them pull in. She reached into her purse and produced a sippy cup and handed it back to the child before she got out. But since she ‘parked under a shaded spot’ she thought it would be fine while she ran in for a quick bite to eat with her brother,” he said.
“Her brother?” I stiffened.
I knew from when we’d briefly dated that her brother had been in prison for child molestation.
She’d had this defense of him every time she talked about him that had my hackles rising and was one of the reasons I’d decided that I couldn’t stay with her.
“She later stated to her brother, that the table beside her overheard, that the reason the baby was still in the car was because he was a registered sex offender, and that he could be put in jail again if he was caught near a child,” Officer Aguilar continued.
That anger boiling in my gut turned to full blown rage.
I could barely hold it in.
“The second time she was told, the police were called.” He looked sick to be saying the words. “She made it look like she’d gone out there to get him. And then no one had paid her any more attention until a person had walked by Emory’s vehicle and heard the baby crying.”
I wanted to cry myself. To throw up. To rage.
“And she still didn’t go out,” I guessed, voice icily calm.
“Fucking monster,” Pepper whispered.
“No,” he said. “She went out to smoke.”
To smoke.
Another reason I’d broken up with her.
She didn’t have any issue smoking around people who didn’t want to be smoked around. Nor did she care that my apartment was a no smoking area, both by my apartment complex and me.
She’d just light up anywhere she wanted and didn’t care who she offended.
I wondered how much secondhand smoke the kid had to deal with on a daily basis.
“Forest…”
My fucking heart.
It was going to explode in my chest.
I closed my eyes and counted to ten.
Forest.
