Impact (Suncoast Society #32)(48)

“Be prepared for a legal battle,” Loren said. “They’re going to want that baby.”

“Let them try.” Tilly looked down into Katie’s sleeping face. Innocence. Blissful ignorance to the drama unfolding around her new life. “They’ll wish they’d never heard of me if they try.”

“We have a court order,” Landry said, “requested by Sofia, naming us custodial guardians indefinitely. Sofia’s will grants custody to us, and specifically states she does not want anyone else in her family to have custody of Katie. Her family can try to fight that, but it’s doubtful they’ll prevail. Dale Waters even mentioned to me that if we wanted to adopt Katie, as long as Sofia didn’t object, the paperwork we now have in place would make that quite easy to achieve. From what I understand, Dale is the best in the area at what he does.”

“He better be,” Cris grumbled. “We’re paying enough for it.”

Tilly knew Loren was right but it didn’t change how she felt. “Shouldn’t we take time to grieve for her?”

“Of course. Just not right this minute. You need to call Leigh and tell her you’re not coming in right away.”

“Maybe she should go to work,” Landry said. “Perhaps it’s the best thing. There’s nothing to be done that Cris and I can’t handle. You are already behind on work from last week.”

Tilly tried to protest. “But—”

“He’s right, Redbird,” Cris hoarsely said. “You need to keep yourself busy today. I don’t know how my family is going to react, and I don’t want you subjected to their bullshit if they act like *s.”

Knowing she was going to be overruled, she looked to Loren, who slowly nodded. “I think they’re right. Let’s get you ready for work and get going. I’ll drive you.”

“I’ll call Leigh and tell her why you’re late,” Landry said.

Resistance was futile. Even Tilly wasn’t so stubborn she would try to fight them.

Plus they were right. Wasn’t a damn thing she could do. She had a lot of things that needed to be done at work. With Loren there, she could focus on work and not on Sofia.

The men walked them down to the car and helped them carry their things.

“Call me when you find out something,” Tilly said to Cris. “When you talk to your family.”

“If I talk to them,” he said. “Might take more than a few hours to track them down.”

Tilly gave Loren directions during the drive, but other than that didn’t say very much.

“This isn’t your fault,” Loren insisted. “I don’t care what any of you think. It was a really bad confluence of events, but it wasn’t your fault.”

“My brain hears you but I wish my heart believed that.”

“I don’t expect you to be all happy-happy-joy-joy right now, but you need to accept that fact to be the best parent you can be to Katie. You’re her mom.”

Tilly fought the urge to cringe at that. “Guess that question’s answered now,” she muttered.

“Look at the bright side of this. You have the baby you always wanted. Cris and Landry are going to be great dads. This is the fairytale ending.”

“More like a Grimm kind of tale. Where everyone gets eaten by the witch, but the witch dies of indigestion before she can finish off the rest of the town. Win by default. Doesn’t feel very good.”

Loren fell silent for a couple of miles. “You didn’t rip the baby from her arms,” she said, her tone dark. “Were she any other woman, you’d shrug and say she sort of made her bed, them’s the breaks.”

“She was Cris’ cousin.”

“And that’s the only reason you’re as upset as you are. Because it’s a personal connection. A woman makes a cowardly series of bad, fear-based choices all her life, commits a crime, gets knocked up, and violates her probation instead of doing the responsible thing and asking for help. You said she told you she took the bus to her probation officer visits, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Obviously alone. There were two opportunities she could have said hey, I need help. Please, help me. And she didn’t. Why?”

Tilly didn’t reply because she already suspected where Loren was going with this.

Loren pressed on. “She was involved with a gang. Kudos to her for finally reaching out, but she only did so after getting the crap beaten out of her for what you said she indicated wasn’t the first time. Only because she feared for the baby. Why didn’t she fear for her baby before she was born, huh?”

Tilly hunkered down in her seat.

“I’m going to pull a you and point out a few flaws here. I know you want to believe Sofia’s story, even more so now that she’s dead. But it does not add up to me. Okay, she says she was clean. Hopefully, that’s the truth. But you don’t know what she was doing before then. Maybe she was turning tricks. How’d she survive all these years with no marketable skills, huh? She was involved in a gang. I’ll admit I’m not the most street-savvy person out there, but I’d be willing to bet money she was no f*cking angel.”

Tilly stared out the passenger window.

“Believing Sofia was completely telling the truth about everything means ignoring a past history that runs contradictory to everything you know about her of a factual nature. I find it hard to believe the welfare scheme was her first crime. You said she lived in a shit-hole and had her clothes in a couple of garbage bags. You’re telling me she couldn’t grab the baby and just walk away in the middle of the night? Go phone 911? She had a f*cking burner cell phone, right? How was she paying for that if her boyfriend wasn’t giving her any money?”