He gets her to eat a forkful of egg pretending it’s an airplane — I don’t understand how the trick works on her — and she happily chews them as he smiles with pride.
It is almost too perfect. I worry what will happen if I enjoy myself too much. Will God come and take something away? Seems to happen with my life. If I get too happy, the barrel of my good luck will tip over and spill out.
“What are you doing at work today?” I ask, forgetting Nate doesn’t have a normal job in my quest to move on from the sobering topic happening in my brain. “Never mind,” I finish when I remember he can’t tell me.
He laughs. “Today I will be manning the cameras in the office.”
My eyes widened. “Really? No secret spy business today?”
He shakes his head. “Although, some days interesting things go down on cameras.” The way he says it has me narrow in my eyes as if I stare at him long enough maybe I can see what he means. I suspect it has to do with the tiny incident involving the storage unit visit. Or Emma’s adventure with chocolate.
“Why are you on camera duty?” I don’t know what Nate normally does, but it seems like a downgrade going from spying on the motorcycle club to watching a bunch of cameras for a day. How many cameras could there be for him to watch?
He shrugs. “Spencer’s dog ate some carpet and needs surgery.”
“Carpet?”
Nate shakes his head. “Not the weirdest thing the dog has ingested, believe it or not, but I guess this time it was like half the living room or something.”
“This time?” Pictures of a living room with half the carpet missing and a trail hanging from the dog’s mouth make me reconsider getting pets. Maybe I just became a fish person.
“Oh shit.” I say checking my watch. “I’m going to be late.”
My eyes fall to Emma as I calculate how long it will take me to get her all the way to daycare and then get back to the office in Clearwater. I haven’t made the drive lately and have forgotten how far it is. There isn’t much traffic in this area, but when there is, it’s a bitch.
“Hurry, Emma, we’ve got to go.”
Nate grabs my plate and empty glass of orange juice after I finished sucking down the last gulp and takes them to the kitchen. “I can take Emma to daycare. It’s practically on the way.”
Her daycare is only a mile down the road, but with morning traffic it takes at least fifteen minutes to do a drop off. Especially if I talk to any of the workers. If I let Nate do it, it would cut out a serious portion of my morning drive.
I reluctantly disagree. Emma is my responsibility, and I can’t pass her off on him whenever I need a little help, but Nate’s not having any of it.
“If you don’t want me to, I won’t. I was just trying to be nice and help you out.”
I stare into his deep eyes and laugh at myself for being selfish. “It’s not that I don’t trust you or anything. I just want to say goodbye to on her first day back to daycare, but it’s fine.”
Satisfied with my answer, he grabs Emma from her high chair and I give her three more kisses as I buckle her into the car seat in the back of my car. I won’t let Nate drive her in his pickup truck, so he asked to drive my car. I’m sure the guys at his office will give him crap, but the fact he’s willing to sit in my tiny little car means the world.
Without my boot — I haven’t worn it in the last two days — I’m ready to go back to work. I’ll miss Emma and Nate, but I’m ready to get back to my outside life and contribute to the world.
Nate and Emma turn one direction out of the parking lot and I go the opposite way. Without them in Nate’s truck, I can turn the radio station up as loudly as I want, and I like my music loud. The windows shake as I drive the twenty minutes to work. My office is in the center of Clearwater, and while it’s a small town, it does have two stop lights and a four-way blinking light. More than Pelican Bay has even considered.
I make sure and turn the music down before I pull into the parking lot. I wouldn’t want anyone in my job to realize I like my music a little sweary. The door to the community offices is open as I step inside putting my mostly empty briefcase over my shoulder. My ankle, without the protective boot or crutches, makes jumping from the truck an adventure, but I manage without falling on my ass.
It isn’t until I hit the sidewalk that my nerves spike. I’ve missed weeks of work and have no idea what is waiting for me inside, probably a mound of paperwork. I should have checked in more, but the few emails I tried to send to my boss were all met with reminders that working while out on a sick leave was against the rules.
Regardless of how much paperwork awaits me, I’m ready to get back to work and have a little normality in my life.
Except there’s a problem because when I get to my desk at the far back room in the hallway, someone else is sitting there. She’s cute, short blonde hair with the brightest blue eyes. She looks up at me and I can tell the moment she figures out who I am because her body freezes and she hesitates before growing fearful like she’s a turtle about to climb into her shell and hide.
“You’re Josie,” she says, her voice shaking.
I nod. “And who are you?”
Her eyes fall to an area next to the desk and mine travel with them. On the floor in one corner there’s a box with a few possessions in it. My possessions. The picture of Emma and me at our first day in Pelican Bay we stopped by the beach to count the seagulls. And the frame of finger painting she made during her first week of daycare. My items, possessions, things I brought to this job are tucked away in a box beside the desk.
What the hell?
