Total pages in book: 73
Estimated words: 69310 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 347(@200wpm)___ 277(@250wpm)___ 231(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69310 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 347(@200wpm)___ 277(@250wpm)___ 231(@300wpm)
Grabbing my room key, I shoved the thin plastic card into the pocket of my jeans and headed for the door. Seemed Little Miss Predictable had a different schedule today. I needed to be outside and ready. And if the hooded man was here for her, then I just might have something. This could be the connection I was looking for.
Four
Bay
Volunteering at After the Bell was something I needed. It gave me a way to help change lives, be there for kids who were much like I had been once. I might not have grown up in a foster home, but I might as well have. And I’d have loved somewhere like After the Bell to go.
The woman who had adopted me from the hospital and the one who had raised me were not the same.
Lana Fox had been a nurse on call the night my birth mother abandoned me at the hospital. She’d taken all the necessary steps to adopt me, but when I had barely turned three years old, she’d died from sepsis.
Claudine Fox was her mother and the only living relative she had. She was the one I had been left with, and she did it for her daughter, but she resented it and me. In her eyes, I was the reason her daughter was dead, which was ludicrous—and I knew that after years of counseling.
Anyway, the kids who came to After the Bell needed someone who cared about them. People willing to help them do homework, learn to read, just spend time with them. I enjoyed it.
But today was my last day before a long haul to Sydney, Australia, and I needed to get more sleep. That being said, when Belinda Finkle—the founder of After the Bell, along with her wife, Reggie—called me this morning and asked me to come in today so that she could take their husky, Snape, to the vet because he had been vomiting all night, I couldn’t tell her no.
Early mornings, the kids weren’t there yet, but meals and snacks had to be prepared, craft centers set up, groceries bought, laundry done, and donation drop-offs sorted through. It was more work than the actual kids themselves. Reggie couldn’t do it all alone and have it completed by the time the first kids started to arrive. Seven days a week, the center opened its doors at ten and closed at eight.
The Finkles had given their lives to this effort, as they both had been brought up in the foster care system. Their daughter, Tempy—short for Temperance—had once been a child in the system who came to the center. When the family she was living with found out they were expecting a child, Tempy was five, and they made the decision to stop fostering. Belinda and Reggie had found out about it and adopted her.
Tempy was ten now and helped out when she wasn’t at school. But Snape was her dog, too, and she was worried. Belinda had said Tempy was in tears and not going to be any help this morning. Which meant they were even more short-staffed. I had to get there early.
Skipping my typical morning routine, I put my coffee in a travel mug and drank it in the shower then pulled my damp hair up into a high ponytail to save time. No gym today, but the work I would do at the center was worth it, and some of it was physical.
It took me less than twenty minutes to get myself ready. With one last scan around the room to make sure I had everything I needed, I headed out the door. I didn’t own a car and walked to the center most days, but I would be taking the bus today since I was on a time crunch. The bus schedule could be wonky, and I didn’t want to miss the seven-o’clock one. If I did, I’d have no choice but to walk.
Stepping outside, I grimaced as the heat engulfed me. It was early summer but already boiling. I hated this time of year. With my fair skin, the sun wasn’t my friend. I thrived in autumn.
Glancing around, I did a sweep of the area just as a safety measure. I didn’t live in a bad part of the city, but DC was big, and crime could happen anywhere. Plus, I watched too much crime TV, and that didn’t help my imagination.
Other than what I assumed was a homeless man over by a dumpster, squatted down, with a dark hoodie over his face, probably asleep, the street looked normal. We didn’t get many homeless around here, but I’d noticed that particular black hoodie a few times the past two weeks.
Moving out of the way as a runner came down the sidewalk, I turned and headed toward the bus stop. Mentally, I was making a list of the things I needed to do once I got to the facility and the order in which I should do them. This would keep me preoccupied on the bus ride.