Chapter 21
Garrett pulled up in his Chevrolet Lumina out front of the middle school, spotting Bella sitting on the cement that wrapped around the school's large flowerbed.
She jumped up the instant she spotted him and raced over.
"Shouldn't you have called dad?" He arched an eyebrow at her.
"And have him take off of work to come get me? Assuming he'd even let me leave school. Nah, I knew you'd vouch and come get me."
"You know I have a job of my own, squirt." He reached over and mussed up her hair before starting his car back up.
"I also know you totally love working at that minimum wage convenience store."
He snorted, pulling out onto the road. "The sarcasm isn't appreciated, kid. Why'd you want to leave school so desperately, anyway?" Not that he minded lying to the school to get her out for a day – everyone deserved to have ditch days on occasion – but he was curious why she'd been so desperate to leave.
"Have you heard anything about the Webers?"
That hadn't taken long to make it to the school. He sighed. "You'd have found out about it last night if you'd been home. Dad was called by the dispatcher to go over to their house. It's an unfortunate thing that sometimes happen. I think it's some form of depression, or something like that."
"Wait, depression made Mrs. Weber drive off a bridge with her babies in the car?"
He glanced at her for a moment before focusing back on the road. "That's not exactly what happened, and I'd love to figure out how it went from what really happened to that, but yes, depression can make people do some seriously screwed up stuff. She's hardly the first."
"And what really did happen?"
He shrugged. "You should talk with dad about it tonight, he can explain it better than I can." Besides, he didn't want to talk about it. It was almost as bad as when Bella had turned to him last year after she'd started her menstrual cycle... "Want to go get ice cream?"