“What are you going to do?” Caleb finally asked.
Naomi ran a hand over her face. “I . . . I don’t know. I can’t turn a baby away. I just—I can’t.”
Then she hesitated.
“But . . .” Her voice faltered, just slightly. “The baby is Richard’s.”
They all knew the baby was Richard’s. But Micah understood why Naomi had felt the need to say it aloud. She’d needed to drive home that point.
The weight of what she’d been asked to do pressed on Micah. He’d spent enough years around the Kings to understand exactly what that meant. He knew exactly the shadow Richard’s name still cast.
Naomi turned to him, her gaze sharp with questions. “You knew about this, didn’t you?”
Micah shifted, but he didn’t look away. “Yes. That’s what I came to talk to you about. I didn’t have confirmation until this afternoon. There are federal charges against Sissy, which takes this situation out of my jurisdiction. Once charges were pressed, child protective services automatically got involved.”
Naomi’s jaw tightened. “So even though we decided not to press charges against Sissy as a way of extending grace, these charges are officially beyond my control.”
“To put it simply, yes. They are. This goes beyond what she did to you and your family.”
Naomi stepped back and raked a hand through her hair. “Sissy did something wrong. I know that. I’m not pretending she didn’t. But that baby needs her mother.”
“I don’t disagree,” Micah said. “But, like I said, her arrest has nothing to do with what happened at the shelter. This started long before she showed up here pretending to need help.”
Sissy had actually shown up to sabotage the place as a way of getting revenge for Richard and his perceived wrongs. Thankfully, she’d been caught before she could do too much damage.
What she’d done was despicable. Micah had thought Caleb and Naomi should press charges.
But then Naomi had said something about God teaching her a lot about grace lately. How could he argue with that?
“What exactly did Sissy do?” Naomi finally asked. “What are these charges against her?”
“Benefits fraud,” Micah said. “Multiple states. The feds are saying she filed claims under different names and lied about her situation to collect money she wasn’t entitled to. The feds believe she knew exactly what she was doing.”
At least they weren’t violent crimes, she reasoned. But still . . .
Naomi’s shoulders sagged just a fraction before she looked up and asked, “What am I going to do?”
