Page 73 of To Believe In You
Chaos woke Matt from a dead sleep. A weight slammed into his gut, and a staccato voice hammered his barely-computing mind. He opened his eyes to a closeup of a little girl’s face as the jabs of small elbows and hands marked his niece’s scramble to get off of him.
“You said I could wake him up.” Jade’s knee skewered his thigh, and then, mercifully, she was on her own two feet beside the couch.
“I didn’t mean like that.” The disapproval in Krissy’s voice was probably enough to correct her daughter, but a note of amusement lifted her tone. She probably considered this payback for all the dolls he’d dismantled and otherwise endangered during their childhood. “Why don’t you go make him some coffee?”
Matt forced himself to sit up, rubbing his face. Krissy and her husband had a guest room, but he hadn’t felt capable of sleep last night. After everyone else turned in, he’d sunk hours into an online search for Nadia and the child. He’d found no leads.
Sleep must’ve caught up with him.
“Sorry. Kids.”
Right. Kids.
He’d done the math a million times. Given the short window of his relationship with Nadia, his own child would be older than five-year-old Jade.
Tim had had very little information to offer. He said he’d intercepted Nadia, upset, the day she disappeared from Matt’s life. She’d been looking for Matt, but he’d left the hotel for a sound check. Tim got her to tell him her news. Convinced paying Nadia to make a quick exit from Matt’s life would be best for everyone involved, Tim had written her a check on the spot. Even she hadn’t known at the time if she was carrying a boy or a girl.
Worse, Tim couldn’t say if she’d gone through with the pregnancy.
But he’d stared at Matt with such desperation, desperation Matt himself had felt often enough in life. As one who’d been forgiven much, he’d formed the words he’d known he owed:You’re forgiven.
He should’ve mustered the strength to watch the statement land and field Tim’s response, but instead, he’d retreated straight to his car and started driving. He prayed God would undo any damage he’d inflicted in the hasty departure.
He’d been a couple miles from Lakeshore when Lina called. He’d promised her honesty, but how could he tell her this? Either he would be one more man she distanced herself from because of his failures, or she’d accept him as he was because she didn’t know how much better she deserved.
He’d let it go to voicemail.
He rubbed his face again, but the pressure in his head and the grit in his eyes didn’t clear. His stomach churned, too, and not because Jade had used it as a trampoline. “What time is it?”
“Eight thirty.”
He’d cleaned up his language when he’d turned his life over to Christ, but the word that ripped through his mind was anything but holy. He’d told Lina his ability to keep four jobs served as a sign of how far he’d come, and now he was an hour and a half overdue at the home improvement store two hours away.
He felt his pocket but didn’t find his phone. “I’ve got to call in.”
“It’s charging on the counter.” Krissy rubbed his shoulder as he passed and fell in step behind him. “Jade and I will take good care of you. We can go explore the state park, make a day of it.”
“I’ve got Key of Hope this afternoon.” And a delivery shift afterward, followed by a couple of hours of emptying trash cans and mopping floors.
He stepped into the kitchen as Jade pressed a button on the six-cup coffee maker. After hopping off the stool, she bounced to another cabinet, where she stretched to reach a coffee mug. He glanced to Krissy to ask about teaching a kid to make coffee, but his sister watched him with such sad eyes, he didn’t have the heart.
He dialed the store and, when Russ came on the line, started making his apologies.
“If you come in for part of your shift, it’s better than nothing. If you miss the whole thing, it’s the same as if you didn’t even call, since it’s well into your shift.”
“Meaning what?” He rubbed the bridge of his nose. Life had been a lot easier when he didn’t care about things like this.
“It would stay on your record for a year, and if anything like this happened again, you’d lose the job. But if you show up, it counts like a normal attendance issue. You get more of those, and the record drops off after sixty days.”
Outside the kitchen window, a tree waved red leaves. Near Lakeshore, some sections of the forest had already begun to look sparse.
If he left now, he could cover the last hour of his shift, but he couldn’t muster the energy to race back. “I’ve got a personal situation. I won’t be in.”
A few seconds of silence ticked by. “You’ve done a good job, but you know I can’t do you extra favors.”
Matt’s throat burned to complain, but he held his peace. “I wouldn’t expect you to.”
“Okay. Just make sure this is a one-time thing. I really don’t want to fire you, but they don’t give me much leeway here. The attendance policies are strict.”
