Unknown
Hey, kid. It’s Tammy. I was an idiot and believed a punk kid who’s never done any good for this place. You’re good for Grace and I hope this doesn’t scare you off from us. The next few meals are on me at the diner. Get however many burgers you want.
Kerry
I heard about Brooke. I’m SO sorry for believing the wrong thing. I must be losing my touch because I’ve always known that Brooke is such a pain to Grace. You deserve better from us.
“Do I need to make you turn your phone off too?” Grace asked from beside me. She sat up with a wince.
“Are you feeling okay?”
“Yeah, just some Braxton-Hicks. It’s normal right about now.” I was tempted to ask about it more, but then she glared. “But no changing the subject. What are you on your phone for?”
“I got a few texts overnight. A lot of people are ... apologizing?”
“Good,” she said. “They finally saw sense. I hoped they would.”
“They listened.” My voice was soft with disbelief.
“We’re not terrible here.” She laughed. “But I’m sure I probably scared some of them. They’ve never heard me talk like that.”
“You didn’t have to do that.”
“It’s you.” She said it like it was obvious. “Yes, I did.”
49
GRACE
Strawberry Springs Neighborhood Watch
Kerry Winsor:Moving on from the ... incident. Let’s talk about something fun! Will anyone be at the farmers market???
Comments:
Jade Clark:Oh, Grace got her GOOD. I’ve never seen Kerry move on from anything.
Kerry Winsor:Helloooooo, I wanna know about the farmers market, Jade! No more talk about how I was wrong.
Mollie Wilson:I had a good harvest this year. I’ll have some strawberries and blueberries.
Kerry Winsor:Yes! Oh, and I bet we’ll finally have good coffee this year too!@Theo Murf, are you attending?
Theo Murf:The shop’ll be open. You all can come in.
Kerry Winsor:But you can never chat when you’re working! Someone needs a social life ...
I knewthe third trimester wasn’t going to be fun, but this was worse than I could’ve ever imagined. My cramps were terrible, but I’d heard of women thinking Braxton-Hicks contractions were the real deal, and I refused to drive to the hospital for anything but something serious.
Add that to the fact that I had to deal with what my sister had done, and I was feeling even worse.
I was sure this was stress from processing the incidents with Brooke while also figuring out the best way to make sure that she got what she deserved. Some days, I felt like the worst sister in the world. Other days, I felt like I was doing exactly what I should have been.
All of it had taken its toll, though. Over time, I started to feel worse and worse, and now that I was at the end of pregnancy, there was a physical exhaustion to add to it all.
“Listen,” I told both Dean and Virginia. We were sitting at the table with coffee, talking about how we were going to deal with Brooke. I’d spent the morning looking into what it would cost to hire an attorney and keep her in jail. “I just want a restraining order at this point. At least for what she did to me.”
“She assaulted a pregnant woman,” Virginia reminded. “That’s a serious offense.”
