His First Choice

Still, one caseworker had a lot of power. Even ones who made you feel like you wanted to make dinner for them every night. Especially those ones.

He thought about calling Tressa. He wanted the support of their bonding together as they protected their son. But didn’t want it to look like he was tipping her off. From what he’d read, they’d be visiting her, too.

Unless, of course, she’d been the one to file the complaint.

As much as he wanted to, he still wasn’t completely ruling out that option.

With the child monitor he kept with him whenever he was out of earshot of his son’s room, Jem popped the top on a beer and, opening the back patio door, sat outside by the stone fireplace he’d built next to the outdoor counter and grill. The sink and miniature refrigerator were flanked by a waterfall feature that lit up at night to show off the goldfish that Levi had picked out. Jem barely noticed any of it.

They hadn’t shown Lacey Hamilton the goldfish.

Still, he’d had a feeling that she’d softened a bit before she left. That she’d maybe even started to believe him.

He would not hurt his son. And would also not stand idly by if someone else did.

* * *

LACEY HAD ALREADY worked on nine other cases by the time Jeremiah Bridges showed up with Levi just before ten the next morning. He’d said he’d take his son with him on his morning rounds, which started at seven, and then bring him in to see her before dropping him at preschool for the afternoon.

Levi had his own hard hat, he’d proudly boasted.

“He’s never around a construction site while there’s dangerous work going on,” his father had quickly asserted. He’d started to explain the safety procedures he’d enacted before ever bringing the little boy to a work site.

At which time Levi had interrupted with “I can’t leave the trailer unless all the machines is off.”

“There’s a job secretary in the office trailer at all times,” his father had added.

If Lacey had had her tablet out, she’d have typed something about those striking blue eyes—both pairs—looking at her so solemnly.

She’d wanted to trust them.

She still felt that way as she led the duo back to her office, Levi’s strides as long as his little legs could make them, attempting to synchronize with his father’s.

“You want to see my playroom?” she asked the little boy just before they reached her office.

With a glance at his father, who nodded, Levi said, “Sure!” She held out her hand. He took it.

“You can wait in my office,” she told his father, pointing toward the door. All case files, including his, were locked in her file drawer. Her computer was off and couldn’t be accessed without her password, anyway. But there were magazines for him to read.

“We won’t be long.” Why she felt the need to reassure him, she didn’t know. Her concern was Levi. And the possibility that someone was abusing him.

At the moment, nothing else could matter to her.

* * *

JEM PLAYED A trivia game on his phone while he waited. It was either that or think about his insides eating him up. He probably should have had some breakfast. Levi had offered to share the scrambled eggs and toast he’d had waiting for him when he’d shown up in the kitchen, sleepy-eyed and hair tussled, early that morning.

Jem was a fix-it kind of guy.

Kind of hard to fix what you didn’t know was broken.

He had six trivia games going—all with guys on his crews. He generally won, but now answered six questions wrong in a row. When he missed one about the pitcher for the Los Angeles Dodgers, he closed the game. Having been on the farm team when the pitcher in question had been pitching, having had beers with him and some of the other guys during a road trip, he knew the guy’s name.

But he just wasn’t in the game, so no point in wasting turns.

Hands in his pockets, he walked around the small office. It was as neat as a pin. No personal pictures on the desk.

But he took note of a message scrawled on a little sheet stuck to the side of the computer monitor. She needed a hero and so she became one.

Something about that note eased his tension and made him feel kind of sorry for the social worker who’d interrupted his life so abruptly.

Reminding him, as it did, that everyone was human.

And no one’s life was perfect.

* * *

“DO I SCARE YOU, Levi?” The minute the little boy had realized that she was going to stay with him in the playroom—and that his father wasn’t going to be there—Levi had begun to shrink in on himself.

There was no other way for her to describe the reaction. His shoulders hunched slightly as he kept his cast close to his stomach. “No. ’Course not,” the little boy said, that softened r grabbing at her.

It was okay for her to care about the children. They could never have too much love. Or so she’d told herself on those times when the professional boundaries she had to keep didn’t quite diminish those occasional heart tugs.

“You want to put this together with me?” The twenty-five-piece teddy bear puzzle was probably too easy for him, judging not only by what Mara, his preschool teacher, had relayed about him, but by the activities she’d observed in his room the night before.

She sat on the floor with him while he worked silently on the puzzle by himself, putting each piece in place without hesitation.

When he’d finished, she handed him another equally easy puzzle. She wanted his concentration.

“I need the box,” he said.

“What box?”

“For the other puzzle.” That r again. He was pointing to the teddy bear puzzle he’d just completed. She’d expected him to leave that and do the second one. Instead, he cleaned up the first one before moving to the next. “Miss Mara says you have to pick up one before you can bring out a other,” he told her.

“You do a lot of puzzles at school?”

“Uh-uh.” He shook his head, not looking up from his task.

“Where’d you learn to do them so well, then?”

“Daddy and I got lots of ’em.”

“What about your mommy—does she do puzzles with you, too?”

“Uh-uh.”

Lacey had stopped to see Tressa Bridges on her way to work that morning, but there’d been no answer at the door. Such was sometimes the case when you made unannounced house calls.