Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 83244 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 416(@200wpm)___ 333(@250wpm)___ 277(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83244 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 416(@200wpm)___ 333(@250wpm)___ 277(@300wpm)
The second I closed the door, Goose reached down, picked up a second cup of gas station coffee that was just as big as his, and offered it to me. “Damn, brother. You’re looking a little rough this morning.”
“Morning to you, too.”
“You sleep, or did you have company last night?” He made a face. “Oh, hell. What am I saying? We all know you’re flying solo these days.”
“That I am.” I took a long sip of the bitter coffee he’d given me, trying my best not to let him bait me. “Regardless, I slept fine.”
“The bags under your eyes say something different.”
“Appreciate the concern.”
“Well then, while I’m at it, you might wanna think about getting yourself a haircut.”
“You trying to drum up some business for Pres?”
“Gotta help out where I can,” he chuckled. “But seriously. You’re looking a bit homely over there.”
“Did you ask me to go with you just so you could ride my ass the whole way?”
“Just stating the obvious.”
“Says the guy whose beard looks like it’s hiding a bear’s ass?”
Goose barked out a laugh so loud it echoed through the cab of the truck. “There he is.”
“Who?”
“You. The real you.” Goose smirked. “The one with a little bite to him. Keep him around. Much better than the polite prospect bullshit you’ve been dishing out.”
I shook my head and laughed. “You’re so full of shit.”
“Always.”
The drive across town went pretty quick. Goose had some old country tunes playing on the radio, and he kept talking shit anytime the opportunity presented itself. Half an hour later, we’d pulled up at a small garage tucked between an auto shop and a tire place. Goose killed the engine, and as he got out, he turned to me and said, “Be back in five.”
“I won’t hold my breath.”
“Better watch it or I’ll leave your ass here.”
“But then who would you have to entertain ya?”
“I’m all the entertainment I need.”
“That’s not something to brag about, brother.”
He shrugged, then shut the door and made his way inside.
The cab went quiet, and I sat there for a minute, soaking it all in. And I mean all of it: the sleeping late, the bad coffee, and the pain-in-the-ass company. I couldn’t imagine it getting any better than this.
2
BROOKE
“I’m not asking to remove him,” I argued, doing my best to keep my frustration at bay. “I’m just asking for a little more time.”
“I hear you.” Lisa, my supervisor, sighed and leaned back in her chair. “But this is the third time you’ve asked for more time in the past month.”
“Because something isn’t right.”
“Suspecting something is wrong and being able to prove it are two different things.”
I hated it when she said things like that. Not because she was wrong. She wasn’t. Far from it. The system wasn’t built on gut feelings. It was built on facts, evidence, and paperwork, mountains and mountains of paperwork. But every instinct I had was screaming at me that ten-year-old Dylan Mercer was in some kind of trouble.
I just couldn’t prove it.
I’d seen the bruises, I’d heard the fear in his voice when he spoke about his father, and I’d felt the tension radiating off of both his parents whenever I did a wellness check. But there was always an excuse for everything.
Except for the time when he whispered, “I don’t want to go back to the basement.”
They didn’t have a basement. I’d checked three times. I’d even gone to the courthouse and looked over the property records. I’d pressed him to tell me what he was talking about, but he refused. So, I was stuck. I knew something was wrong, but I had no real evidence.
“He’s had two school transfers in two years,” I pleaded. “His attendance is getting worse, his grades have dropped, and every time I talk to him, he is more and more withdrawn.”
“Every welfare check has come back clean. You’ve said that yourself.”
“Yes, his parents seem great, especially his mother, but that doesn’t mean something isn’t wrong.”
Her expression softened as she muttered, “I know.”
That simple acknowledgment took some of the fight out of me. She knew, and that’s what made this job so damn hard. Most people thought social workers saw an abused or neglected child and swooped in to save the day. They didn’t see the impossible balancing act behind every decision we made. If you removed a child too quickly, without being positively sure, then you could destroy a family. If you wait too long, you could fail the very person you were trying to protect.
There was no perfect answer.
Only the one you could make with the information you had.
“We could’ve missed something.”
For a moment, neither of us spoke. I looked down at the file in my lap and sighed. I’d worked so hard to be sitting in this office. Years of classes, months and months of long nights studying, internships, and volunteer hours. An endless stream of professors, supervisors, and exams. I wanted this. I wanted to make a difference. To do that, I had to put in the work.