Page 108 of Family Bonds- Garrett & Justine

She got back to work and tried to push everything from her mind, but it wasn’t happening.

She watched the clock waiting for Garrett and then hated herself for doing that.

For putting more on his shoulders with everything else he had.

She should have waited before she texted and then kept it to herself.

But hadn’t they agreed they weren’t going to do that?

If she wanted him to talk to her, then it meant she had to do the same thing.

“Hey,” he said, almost running over. “What’s going on?”

She blinked her eyes a few times, looked at Troy, and said, “Just wanted to see you.”

It was as if he knew she didn’t want to talk about it out in the open like this.

“I always like it when you want to see me,” he said. “Can you take your lunch now?”

“Go,” Troy said. “I’ve got it covered. It’s not that busy.”

It was always busy, but they got most of the lunch rush meds out for people already, though there would still be more coming in.

She locked the door to the meds, leaving Troy to only hand out what was processed for pickup.

“Come to my office,” she said.

He waited for her to open the door off to the side so he wasn’t in the back with the meds.

Once the door was shut, he pulled her into his arms. “Hey,” he said. “What happened today?”

She didn’t want to cry. She hated it felt like she did so much of that in her life now.

Instead she held onto the hug and gathered her thoughts, then stepped back.

“I heard from the DA today first.”

“What did they say?” he asked.

She moved to sit in the chair behind her desk and he sat in the one in front of it. They were the only two chairs in the room.

“He said that if the company won’t release the footage, which they won’t, because I heard from them too, that they will have to subpoena it and they will. I already forwarded the email back to the DA and the detective on the case.”

“You expected that might happen,” he said.

“I did. I had hoped not. Then the DA pointed out that they don’t have the time or manpower to go through a ton of footage right away. I’m not even sure how much footage is stored. If it’s only six months, it’s too late. The footage is gone that we would need.”

“I don’t know that anything is ever gone for good, Justine. Things get archived.”

She frowned. “I didn’t think of that.” She waved her hand. “Either way, right now, I have nothing more than they will subpoena the information. We should get it at some point, but who knows how long any of it is going to take.”

“Did you get the whole ‘let the process run its course’ spiel?”

“It’s like you were there on the call,” she said. “I want to move on with my life. We can’t with this hanging over us. It’s been seven months and I know things take time, but I want my father’s name cleared. I want Elise behind bars where she belongs.”

“Her defense attorney needs to prove self-defense and that isn’t easy.”

“No,” she said. “But the DA is overworked and stretched thin and I don’t like that things might be missed. As John pointed out, this isn’t a priority because Elise poses no threat to society. She’s released on bail and living her life as if this didn’t happen.”

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