Chapter Twenty-Two

Shaun’s back ached. She was tired but she couldn’t complain. Bodie was equally overworked and near exhausted. He’d gotten his pal JD to help him out at the garage but JD just didn’t know as much about cars as Riley and Pete had. In addition, he wasn’t one for working hard, especially in the dead of summer when the heat topped one hundred degrees.

She’d been with the girls non-stop and she needed a break. Even half an hour to take a bath without them knocking on the door to find out what she was doing would have been a blessing. They ran amuck and she had to constantly keep after them. If they went out of sight for even a minute the baby would have a penny stuck up her nose a knife in hand preparing to stick into an obscure outlet that didn’t have a cover.

She’d just put them down for a nap and was planning to take one herself when someone knocked on the door. They also rang the bell as if you had to do both.

She buried her fist into the small of her back and stretched waiting for the satisfying crack and pop. Oh, yes…She sighed in contentment and answered the door.

It was Angie, Theresa’s mama, and she was holding little Jace’s hand. Jace looked like he had been crying for a long time and then had gotten completely tuckered out from it. His little tanned face was swollen and still wet with tears and his breath was hitching in his chest as he sucked on a pacifier and watched her with big tired eyes.

He was a little over a year old and had always been a happy baby. So it was surprising to see him in such a state. Shaun frowned at Angie. She never had liked that woman. She’d heard her and her husband say some pretty nasty things about Theresa for ‘ending up with that Mexican’. It sure wasn’t going to be easy for Theresa living with her parents when Pete got deported.

“Hi Angie. What brings you here?” That’s when Shaun noticed that there was a duffle bag also at Angie’s feet.

“Theresa up and ran off with her cousin. She left this one here and I ain’t got no time to be raising nobody’s child. So I’m bringing him to you.” The woman jerked the hand holding onto little Jace’s toward Shaun and Jace cried out in pain, his pacifier falling from his mouth as he began to wail.

“Jesus.” True said and then reached down and swooped the baby up into her arms. He was wet, his diaper was soaked through and he smelled like urine and sweat.

Jace immediately let out a deep sigh and stopped wailing. His eyes were hooded and it was obvious that he was exhausted. Shaun held him even closer.

“Where’s Theresa?” She asked in confusion.

“Ain’t you listening? She been messing around with one of her own cousins. I knew she weren’t no good once she laid up with that Mexican. Now she been running around with my sister’s boy and he ain’t but seventeen. They ran off together and she left the boy with me. She ain’t no goddamn good.” Angie sighed and looked at Jace. “I’m too old for this.” Although she was barely forty, she did look ten years older than that. “So you might as well take him to his father. They can go off to Mexico together. Theresa don’t want neither of them no more.”

“Oh Jesus,” Shaun said while hugging Jace.

Angie turned away but then stopped. “Oh. And Theresa and my nephew were the ones that called the immigration people on Pete so they could get him out of the way. He better off without her.” She finally left. Shaun stood there in total disbelief long after Angie and her husband, who was waiting in the car, drove off.

How had she been such a bad judge of character? She had liked Theresa. She had given her clothes and helped her with Jace.

The baby had fallen into an exhausted sleep against her chest. She carried him upstairs and placed him on her and Bodie’s bed while she got a disposable diaper and items to give Jace a bath. When she removed his diaper she saw that his unchanged diaper had caused angry red welts to appear on his bottom.

“Jesus…” Shaun said again. This time she took time to study him closely and saw that his arm was swollen and she remembered the way he had cried out when Angie had jerked it. She covered him with a blanket and hurried to the phone. She didn’t realize that she was crying until Bodie said hello and the words came out all garbled.

“Shaun?” Bodie asked. “Is that you, baby? What’s wrong?!”

“Come home NOW! I think those bastards broke Jace’s arm!”

He didn’t say another word. The phone was dropped and he was in his truck within seconds.

 

 

The emergency room nurse stated that Jace didn’t have a broken arm but a case of nursemaid’s elbow. The slipped ligament was easily put back into place when the nurse slightly bent his arm at the elbow.

Bodie was pacing in anger. The girls were with his mother and he’d sent JD home and told him to close and lock up the garage. He was going to keep it closed for the time being. Shaun had told him the story about what Theresa had done. She’d also run off with the money that they’d given her to take care of herself and Jace. The little conniving bitch, he thought bitterly.

Worse is that the hospital was forced to call the police and a social worker had shown up threatening to take Jace into foster care.

“We’re the only family he has. Isn’t there some way for me and my husband to take care of him?” Shaun pleaded.

The social worker wasn’t much older than Shaun. She was a white woman with round rosy cheeks, warm brown eyes and an easy smile that had disappeared when she learned the extent of the story.

“So the mother took off to pursue an incestuous relationship with a minor. The father is in the process of being deported. And the only other relatives left the child dirty, hungry and injured on your doorstep. Do I have everything correct?” She asked while scribbling in a notebook, her voice clipped and angry. “Unbelievable.” She muttered to herself.

“Well,” Shaun added as she rocked a sleeping Jace in her arms. He was now clean and fed and no longer seemed to be in discomfort. “The baby’s mother was the one who called the immigration officials on Pete. And the grandmother doesn’t care if they both are deported to Mexico. It’s not possible is it? Jace was born here. What happens to him when his father is deported?”

Bodie was sitting next to Shaun now, his arm around her shoulders.

Miss Bruner, the caseworker shook her head. “This is out of my realm. What we can do is issue you temporary custody under Kinship Care. It’s where close friends or family take emergency custody of the child.”

Shaun nodded in relief. “So Jace can come home with us?”

“Yes. But this is temporary. I’ll contact the magistrate and have him contact the immigration judge. We need to put an immediate halt to the deportation proceedings until Mr. Rodriguez can issue you temporary guardianship.”

“Thank you, Miss Bruner.” Bodie said. “Pete’s going to be totally devastated when he learns about all of this.”

Miss Bruner looked at the sleeping baby in Shaun’s arms. “It’s tragic how cruel people can be to each other.”

Shaun placed her head on her husband’s shoulders and closed her eyes tiredly.