Five Years Later
Chapter 2
Grace had every right to be mad at her father, but she just couldn't. She missed him like crazy. She missed her mom too but knew that her mom was at peace. Grace had been in the delivery room when her mom hemorrhaged after giving birth to Matthew. She never got to hold him, dying moments after he was born. The doctors couldn't explain why she had died. They attributed it to being older but no one knew. Grace had been lucky to look older than what she was and so they handed the healthy baby boy over to her, assuming that she was old enough and knew what she was doing with a newborn. So at nearly fifteen years old, Grace become completely responsible for a nine year old and an infant.
Christine had moved them to an area southwest of St. Louis before she died. Grace never understood why. They didn't know anyone and there was no possibility of Mike looking there. Grace had always felt that it wasn't childbirth that had killed her mother but grief over Lucas and anger towards her husband. Hannah dreamed of leaving the area but it was comfortable and easy for Grace. If anyone knew her age, they didn't say. It was easy to find a job because there were jobs to be had. The only people who knew Grace's secret was the sheriff and his wife. Legally speaking, the sheriff should have never allowed Grace to care for her younger siblings but Division of Family Services was overtaxed in the cities and nonexistent in the rural areas and Grace was stubborn.
The sheriff's wife owned a restaurant and so Grace waitressed. She never went back to school and at sixteen she took her GED test. No one had pushed anything because there was no one was left to care. There was an apartment above the restaurant that the sheriff and Maggie, his wife, allowed them to stay in. They helped Grace with Hannah and Matthew, but left the parenting to her. As soon as she was old enough, she started dispatching at the sheriff's department. She loved it. She still waitressed for extra money and had recently bought herself a car. She was only nineteen but most people thought she was much older. People also thought that Matthew was her son, but she would quickly tell them otherwise.
She sacrificed a lot so Hannah and Matthew could have a normal childhood. She had no idea what it was like to be a cheerleader, or to be in clubs, or any of the things that Hannah got to do. Hannah balked at having to help with Matthew so much and was a little angry at their circumstances and their father but she missed him as much as Grace did. Grace rarely thought of her old life when she got to be a kid and not a parent.
Matthew was now in kindergarten. He loved school and was bright and happy. His teacher thought that Grace was much older and knew that his mom had died and dad was missing. When Grace tucked in Matthew every night, she would tell him about his daddy. It had caused the little boy to think he was a super hero. They also talked about their mom but talking about their dad was much more fun. It gave him an almost fairy tale fantasy but Grace didn't mind. Let Matthew have the illusion. When Grace finally fell asleep on the couch, she would dream about when everything was perfect. Lucas and her mom were still alive, and her dad was home.
She had given the bedrooms to Hannah and Matthew and slept on the couch so Hannah could have some privacy. She worked between twelve to sixteen hours a day several days a week. Everything that she did went to Hannah and Matthew. Their apartment was bright and homey with furniture that Grace found at yard sales and thrown out. She would refurbish it and had learned to sew. There was bright throws, curtains and pillows all over the apartment and the brick walls were covered with drawings from Matthew and her paintings. The one thing that Grace did for herself was buy herself painting supplies. She painted mostly landscapes and they were all over the apartment and downstairs in the restaurant.
She took Matthew and Hannah to school. Matthew always gave her a hug and kiss and she would tell Hannah to behave. She was getting hard to handle. Sheriff and Maggie helped a lot with her, because in the sheriff's words, Hannah was starting to need a "firmer hand" that her sister couldn't provide. Grace would work at the sheriff's department for eight hours and then work at the restaurant until it closed at eight. On Fridays and Saturdays she worked until ten or eleven because the tips were better. Matthew and Hannah were upstairs so she was close by. The only break in their routine was church Sunday mornings and on Wednesday night, Hannah and Matthew went to mid-week services. She wanted them to have a good upbringing that their parents would be proud of.
Grace never really understood why her mom hadn't told Mike about the pregnancy when he called from the Arctic. She had told Grace that she didn't tell him because he needed to concentrate on what he was doing and wouldn't if he knew that she was pregnant. Grace had always felt that Mike had the right to know. He would love Matthew. That was why she concentrated her stories on their dad. Maybe she was a bit angry at her mom. Hannah worshipped their mom and so she would tell Matthew about her.
After getting to work that morning, she had a stack of warrants to enter into the statewide and national system and filing to do. She loved dispatching but she also liked being able to sit in an office, turn her music on and just work. Twenty hours a week that was what she did, the other twenty hours she was in the dispatch chair. Rural law enforcement was still struggling since the pandemic and Sheriff Smith had instituted a program that ex-military had to register at the sheriff's department so if need be, he knew who to call on for help. Grace, being a Navy brat, had been tasked with creating a database and talking to the registrants because she understood some of the acronyms that they used and knew how to "talk their talk." She actually loved it because some of them reminded her of her dad.
Grace had gotten a call from the school because Hannah had talked back to the teacher and ended up in detention. It was the only time that Grace struggled, she hated going to Sheriff Smith and Maggie with all her issues, because she was trying to be all grown up. She wanted Hannah to behave because if their dad suddenly showed up, Grace wanted to show him that she had done well, wanted him to be proud of her. She choose not to tell Sheriff Smith. She would just handle it herself somehow. It just made her tired, and miss her dad all the more. He would have the perfect answer to deal with Hannah. Grace was just getting tired of being the parent.