Watson, Kathi Barton [little red riding hood ebook .txt] 📗

did strip her down faster than my dad did when he looked her over.” She laughed. “Brenda has been arrested, and now that Albert is going to jail, the police will go into the house and find whatever they can to keep the two of them in jail. Finding out about the recording devices was brilliant. I think Cooper nearly wet himself when he confessed to recording his beatings of the little guy.”

“I just want to go up and check on Louis and make sure he gets a good dinner, then I’m going to take a nap. I don’t want to leave him here, but I also am dragging right now and need a nap.” He told her he’d stay with Louis tonight. “Thank you so much. As much as I’d like to stay too, I’m exhausted. Stress will do that for you.”

“I can stay.” She’d forgotten that Wesley was there with Wats. “In fact, I’d love to do it for you. Wats told me you might be taking him home to live with you too, and I think as his future grandpa, I should make sure I get to know him. Don’t you think?”

She kissed him on the cheek and told him she loved him. Wesley just blushed and told her that he dearly loved her as well. As he walked away, rubbing his cheek where she’d kissed him, Rayne suggested that they order the two of them pizza so they could share it over getting to know each other. He told her he’d take care of it.

After putting AJ in her car seat, she got into the car too. Closing her eyes, she thought she was the luckiest person in the world—a home, husband—soon to be anyway—as well as children. There wasn’t much else she could wish for.

~*~

Charlie decided she was going to keep the condo for a while anyway. It was close enough to the hospital that she could walk should she want. It was paid for, and the furniture wasn’t that bad. While her mom had had an eclectic taste in furniture, it would suit her.

Going through the mail that had piled up while she was gone, Charlie found her mother’s death certificate, as well as some things that she could take care of right away. Wats had been nice enough to only keep the mail for her and toss out all the flyers that her mom had gotten. Today she was going to go to the bank and see what was there that needed her attention.

Her mother’s bank account had been frozen when she was shot. Going there this morning, she was going to be able to get into the account and open up one for herself to use to take care of unpaid bills, as well as anything else that hadn’t been cared for before her mother was killed.

Leaning back on the couch she’d removed the plastic from when she arrived last night, she thought about her mom. Mom was a good person. Everyone that Charlie had spoken to since her mom’s death had only good things to say about her. Even people that had been before her in court said she’d been fair and had worked around things so as not to hurt their families when it was unnecessary.

Charlie knew her mom had taken to heart one of the men she had sentenced. She made it so he only spent time in the cell at night after his sitter came for his three children. As he was working too, she told him so long as he didn’t miss a day of work, she’d work with him. There was no reason for the man to lose his job over a few parking tickets that he’d not had the money to pay. She was generous like that to a lot of people, Charlie had come to understand.

Getting up to see what sort of foodstuff she was going to have to toss, she found a note from Abby Wilkerson. In it, she told her how the house had been gone over, and anything that was perishable had been either donated or tossed out. She had also made sure Charlie had a few staples to use until she was able to fill the cupboards again. The Wilkersons were nice people too. She’d come to depend on them over the last several weeks.

While her eggs cooked on the stove, she thought about her being a physician. While she didn’t think she’d learned anything in her classes that was on the test, she was able, from having read a great deal, to get the right answers when the situations were spelled out for her. A doctor. Her mom would have been so very proud of her. She would also have gotten a big kick out the way it had happened.

When the phone rang in the living room, Charlie didn’t bother going to answer it. She’d not given her mom’s number out, so whoever it was, they wanted her mom, not her. Her cell phone rang just as the phone stopped ringing in the other room. She smiled when Wats’s face appeared.

“I tried to call the house phone. Silly of me to think you’d answer it. Anyway. I’d like to invite you over to have dinner with my new little family.” He told her how he and Rayne had adopted a little girl and that they were working to keep a six year old little boy too. “We’re growing by leaps and bounds here. Also, I wanted to talk to you about what you’re going to do about working. Now that you’ve finished school, I need a partner. Rayne is going to stay on at the hospital. She might be better off there than working with me. I don’t know that we’d get too much done anyway.”

“How will this work if I say yes to working with you? I know little to nothing about partnerships.” He said his dad was an attorney, and if she wanted to ask legal questions,