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CHAPTER FIVE

Zoe

“That’s a sweet baby,” I cooed at the Golden Retriever strutting around next to the stroller, his little tail waving softly side to side.

Everything in the world seemed new and exciting to him, despite being the ripe old age of nine. And everyone he came across was his-long lost best friend: other dogs, people, a random squirrel just trying to dig up a nut.

But there was no one in the world Blue loved more than Lainey. Not even his dog-mom. And she knew it too.

“I feel like this is his way of telling me I need to settle down and have kids,” she said when Blue rushed out the door to run up to the stroller and stare lovingly at my baby.

“If you need to be de-influenced, I changed my shirt three times today because I was spit up on. This was my last clean shirt. And if you can’t tell from that sour smell emanating from me, there’s more baby spit up on this one too.”

“Yeah, but look at her,” Blue’s mom said, giving Lainey the goo-goo eyes.

Blue was our newest walking buddy.

We were up to four walks a day now. And my aching legs reminded me of that every night when I lay down to try to sleep.

Lainey had a little pink fan I found at the dollar store clipped to the side of her stroller to move some air for her on the really hot days.

As for me, I sweated. A lot. Like through my bra and underwear kind of sweating.

And Blue? Well, Blue was allowed to take a dip in his little doggy pool in the backyard when we got back from our walks before I ushered him into the house, where he would trot down the hall and into his very own bedroom. He had a twin-sized bed with bone-patterned sheets, a basket piled sky-high with toys, and an insulated and freezable dog bowl that kept his water cold all day—and cost more than my whole wardrobe put together. There were also prints on the wall above his bed. One for every year of his life, taken on his birthdays in front of what I assumed was a dog-safe cake with his mom beaming next to him.

Blue was a lucky dog.

And if his owner ever decided to have a baby, that would be one spoiled kid.

“You ready to go…” I paused, waiting for Blue to turn back and look at me, ears up, “swimming?”

He nearly ripped off my arm in his eagerness to get back home and splash around in the pool.

Did I maybe turn on the hose and soak my legs and wipe down Lainey too? Sure did.

It was a long, hot day, and Blue was our last walk. I was looking forward to going home, stripping out of my sweaty clothes, and taking a cold shower. Hopefully, one of the shirts I’d hand-washed in the sink would be clean to wear in case of some last-minute deliveries.

I hadn’t exactly been slouching prior to The Incident. But I’d been going above and beyond to use work to try to shut up my brain.

It had been a week to the day since that whole situation. I still felt like my body was trying to metabolize all that adrenaline I’d felt. I’d been antsy and jumpy. And while sleeplessness was the norm for me since I found out I was pregnant and that my whole life was about to change, I’d barely been managing three hours—with maybe a short catnap in the middle—since that night.

I was running on coffee from the dollar store made in a machine that had a dubious amount of electrical tape holding the cord together and the bone-deep need to do better for us. So that maybe I wouldn’t be doing jobs late at night in weird areas of town where all sorts of bad things apparently happened.

I’d been checking the news and true crime channels online to see if anyone was covering the man who’d been beaten and shot in an alley in Golden Glades.

But I got no results.

This man wasn’t a blip on anyone’s radar.

Meanwhile, his image was burned into my brain. And right beside him, the men who’d chased me through the streets, ready to—what—silence me for good? Then do what to my baby? The same? Something worse?

My mind had been running wild with worst-case scenarios. Everything from human trafficking to being sold for parts.

Your mind could go to really dark places when you were solely responsible for a precious, helpless life in a big, scary world you knew was full of bad people with worse intentions.

“That’s a good boy,” I told Blue as I handed him his favorite stuffy then pulled one of his blankets up over his wet body. “We’ll see you after the weekend, okay? Have fun with your mom at the p-a-r-k tomorrow.”

I maybe walked slowly through Blue’s house on the way back out. Not slow enough to look like I was casing the joint—since I knew there were nanny cams around—but just slowly enough that I could really take it all in.