Page 10 of Working for the Single Mom

"Hi, Ms. Merritt, this is Rachel over at Little Sprouts. Vince is running a fever, about a hundred and one, and he's saying his throat hurts. We need you to come get him as soon as you can, we've got him resting in the office but we can't keep him in with the other kids."

"Okay. Okay, I'm on my way, give me twenty minutes." I hang up, and my hands are already shaking a little, the way they always do when it's Vince, even over something as small as a fever. Which I know kids get all the time. "Vince is sick. I've gotta go get him."

"Go." Beau doesn't even hesitate. "Don't worry about anything here, I'll lock up whenever I head out."

"Thank you." I grab my keys off the desk, sling my bag over my shoulder, and head for the door, already running through the list in my head. Children’s Tylenol, thermometer, the good blanket he likes when he's not feeling well, the one with the dinosaurs on it that's probably still in the dryer from last week.

I get out to the SUV, climb in, and turn the key.

Nothing.

I try it again. Nothing but a click, and then silence, not even the dashboard lights coming on this time. "No. No, no, no, come on." I try it a third time, like the car's going to change its mind if I just ask nicely enough, but it doesn't, and I sit there for a second with my hand still on the key, feeling the panic climb up my throat.

I don't have time for this. I don't have money for this either, not really, not with rent due in a week and a car payment that's already made things tighter than I'd like. I bang my palm against the steering wheel once, hard enough it stings, and then I make myself breathe, because falling apart in a parking lot isn't going to get me to my son any faster.

I climb out and head back into the shop, and Beau's still standing where I left him, looking at his phone. He glances up when the door swings open. "Did you forget something?"

"My car won't start." I hear how thin my voice sounds and hate it. "It's completely dead. I don't know what's wrong with it, and I don't have time to figure it out, Vince needs me right now."

Beau's already grabbing his keys off the hook by the door before I even finish the sentence. "I'll take you."

"You don't have to do that. You've got a delivery to run, I can call somebody, I can⁠—"

"Sadie." He says my name firm, cutting through whatever half-formed plan I was about to try and talk myself into. "The Hendersons can wait an hour. Your kid can't. Get in the damn truck."

I don't have the energy to argue with him, and honestly, I don't want to. It’s nice to have someone to share this with. I’ve never had that before. I follow him out to his truck, climb up into the passenger seat, and he's pulling out of the lot before I even get my seatbelt buckled.

"Where's the daycare?" he asks.

"Little Sprouts, off of Maple. Take a right at the light up here." My hands are twisting in my lap, and I make myself stop, and fold them flat instead. "I'm sorry.” I blow out a breath. “This isn't your problem, and now you're stuck driving me around instead of doing your actual job."

"You are my actual job, far as I'm concerned right now. Well…you and getting your kid taken care of." He glances over at me at a stop sign, and there's a gentleness in his tone that settles the panic in my chest just a little. "How bad's the fever?"

"A hundred and one, they said. And his throat's bothering him." I stare out the window, watching the town go by, houses I've driven past a hundred times without ever really seeing them. "He gets sick every couple months, it seems like. Ear infections mostly, but sometimes it's worse. I hate not being able to just be there the second it happens."

"You're doing exactly that right now,” he reminds me.

I still feel like a failure. "Because you drove me. My car picked today, of all days, to die." I laugh, but there's no real humor in it. "Everything with him always seems to happen on the worst possible day."

"That's just how things work, I think. Never a convenient time for it." He takes the turn onto Maple without me having to tell him again. He's paying closer attention than I gave him credit for. "You said his throat's bothering him. Did he complain about that a lot, or is this new?"

"New. He didn't say anything about it this morning." I feel the worry twist tighter in my chest just talking about it out loud. "I hope it's not strep again. He had it back in the spring, and it knocked him out for the better part of a week."

"We'll figure it out." He says it like it’s not that big of a deal. "Little Sprouts, right up here?"

"That's it." I point at the building, and he pulls into the lot, parking close to the front door like he already knows I'm going to want to move fast once we're inside. "Thank you. I don't, I don't know what I would've done if you hadn't been standing right there."

"Called somebody else, probably. You would’ve figured it out." He puts the truck in park, looks over at me, and there's a look on his face that I don’t want to analyze too hard. "Go get your boy. I'll be right here."

I climb out of the truck and head for the front door, and my chest is still tight with worry over Vince, but underneath it, there's another feeling sitting there too, a warmth that has everything to do with the man sitting in that truck waiting on me like it's the easiest thing in the world.

I push it down, same as I have every day for two weeks now, and I go inside to get my son.

seven

. . .

Beau