“I got a call from CPS,” she said.
“Oh,” the woman said.“You can just put CPS.”
“Thank you,” she said, her throat tight.
She leaned in and put her name, then CPS, followed by the date and time on the sign-in sheet.And was given a name tag and sent inside.
“You can come into the room,” a nurse said, looking down at her name tag.
“I …” She hadn’t seen Melanie for a year.And she was scared.She didn’t know how bad her sister would look.How much difference the ravages of drugs would’ve made in the time since she’d last seen her.
When she walked into the hospital room, the curtain was shut.
“Visitor,” the nurse said.
The curtain swept open, and her heart jumped.But her sister wasn’t there.Neither was her sister’s longtime boyfriend, Ty Porter, whom Melanie blamed for absolutely everything.Instead, she foundherself staring at the tall, broad frame of a cowboy, his back to her, cradling a baby.
He didn’t even have to turn around for her to know who it was.
Clark Porter.
“I …”
He turned around, and her heart leapt up into the center of her throat.Goddamn Clark Porter.She should hate the Porters.Really, she did.
But Clark had always been a tall, disastrous drink of whiskey that she knew she couldn’t afford to take.
He had gotten here before her.
It was an echo of about a hundred other moments in their lives.Whether it was a rent-by-the-hour motel parking lot.An ER.The parking lot of a Wendy’s.All those times they’d responded to SOS calls from their siblings and shown up ready to do battle for them.
And often with each other.
Clark was someone she saw much more often than she wanted to.It was always a crisis.And when she saw him, her body went into fight-or-flight response—her stomach going tight, her heart beating hard and heavy.
Fitting this time, because this was inarguably a crisis.
“What are you doing here?”
“Ty called me,” he said, his voice rough.
“Child services called me,” she said, and she felt her tone sounded petulant, more wounded than she intended it to.
“We should both take that meeting,” he said.
She shook her head, not understanding fully.“Why?”
“They’re looking for family to take her.”
“Yes, and I assume they were going to ask me.”
She felt strangled by the circumstances.She didn’t think she was in a place to take care of a baby, but she wasn’t a homeless drug addict, so she was definitely a more stable option than her sister.
“They signed over their rights,” Clark said.
“They did?”
The wave of grief was fresh and overwhelming.
