Page 15 of Broken Halo

“Wait. What?” I can tell she’s stopped in her tracks. “Who? CPS?”

“Yes, dammit.” I pull into the garage. “What do I do?”

After a pause that feels like a lifetime as I sit here parked next to my dead husband’s Jag that I still haven’t gotten rid of, I finally hear the clicks of her shoes quicken. “I’m in north Plano, not far. I’ll cancel my dinner and be on my way. Whatever you do, don’t be a bitch.”

I glance into my rearview mirror and see Paula stalking up my circle drive, on a mission that doesn’t look good, ushered by three uniformed officers this time. “That’s your advice? Don’t be a bitch?”

“You know what I mean. Be cooperative. I’ll be there in fifteen—less if I can get through traffic.”

She hangs up, not giving me a moment to complain or freak out further. Meanwhile, Paula and her troops are hovering like hawks at sunset, making me feel like nothing but rotten roadkill.

I turn off my car and get out, barely offering them a glance. She has dragged along different police officers today. I open the back door and reach into the middle and unbuckle Griffin from his rear-facing car seat.

“If you could be happy for just a few minutes, Mommy will give you cookies after dinner,” I whisper. This makes him smile. His vocabulary might only include ten to twenty words, but he sure can understand everything I say.

If only he understood the art of bribery as well as he knows vanilla wafers.

“Mrs. Ketteman.” Paula approaches and extends her hand.

In an effort not to be a bitch, I shift Griff to my left arm to accept her greeting, but I can’t help that mine isn’t warm and I’m definitely not offering her any cookies. “I wasn’t aware you needed any further information from me. You could have called.”

She gives me a self-righteous leer that I would thoroughly enjoy wiping from her face with the palm of my hand. “Well, yes, that was yesterday. I’m afraid there has been some new light shed on the investigation and we were wondering if we could come in again.”

I tip my head. “Why?”

She raises a thin brow and looks down her nose at me. “There have been some additional claims made against you for the possession of illegal substances.”

I take a step back. “Excuse me?”

“Illegal substances,” she repeats, as if I really did miss what she said the first time. “Now, we don’t have a warrant … yet. You obviously appear to be a caring mother and upstanding citizen. You can give us consent to search and if we find nothing, then this claim will go away as quickly as it popped up. If we have to get a warrant … well … that will drag things out and,” she shakes her head, “not look good for you.”

“You want to search my house for drugs?” I’m not sure I could be more shocked if JT himself waltzed up my driveway to announce he’s getting the old band back together.

“Like I said,” she waves her hand toward the officers, “if they don’t find anything, this will all go away, and quickly. It just depends on how fast you’d like to get through the process. Or, of course, in case you have something to hide…”

She lets that thought die off into the thick air hanging between us that has nothing to do with the Texas humidity.

I don’t want them in my house going through my things but I have nothing to hide. I haven’t even had a drink since Robert died—I’ve had no desire to weaken my senses. Instead, I’ve felt the need to endure every tortured wound he left behind in an effort to remember every mistake I’ve made along the way—I deserve that. It hasn’t been a fun four months but neither were the three years prior when he was wasting perfectly good oxygen in the world.

Jen knew exactly what she was saying when she told me to be cooperative—she knows I have little patience and even less of a filter. My bitch is surfacing, hovering in that dangerous, shallow area where I have trouble governing her.

I want this woman off my driveway and out of my life. The quicker I can do that, the better. “Fine. There’s nothing for you to find anyway—go for it. If you’ll excuse me, I need to make dinner for my son. I’ve been at work all day and he came with me.” I turn to go into the house but can’t help myself when I flip my hair over my shoulder and add, “I wouldn’t want anyone mom-shaming me for using daycare or anything. But don’t worry, we managed just fine.”

It seems Paula has an inner-bitch as well. She returns a glare that rivals my own.

But what I didn’t know is that, today, my impatient, inner bitch would end up costing me in a way that my trust fund and every bank account left over from my asshole dead husband would never be able to fix.

The price being so hefty that, after all I’ve been through, I might have finally found my breaking point.

* * *

I’ve never believed in the so-called sensation referred to out of body experience until this moment.

I thought I’d hit my low yesterday, when CPS showed up the first time, threatening my most treasured role in life, the best thing I’ve ever done—being a mother. I know I’m the delinquent child. I’ve always gone my own way and flipped everyone off in the process. Jen and Cam have loved me in spite of my ways. My parents, on the other hand, have silently communicated how I’ve disappointed them over the years.

But being Griffin’s mom, learning it was possible to love another human in a way I never knew before, changed me. Dance, Juilliard, Broadway—they were my mother’s dreams and she pushed me hard to make sure I attained every single hellacious one of them.

But me? I only wanted to love, be loved, and from that, be a mom.

---