Page 9 of Night By Night

He wanted to update his truck one day, because he hated that he didn’t have a backseat for JJ to ride in. He knew having a car seat in the front passenger seat wasn’t ideal, but it was the situation. Lois’ car had been older than his truck, with far more miles on it, and in bad shape. He sold it when she died, and he’d needed a truck for work, anyway.

JJ received a small Social Security death benefit every month because of Lois’ murder, but he stashed that into a savings account and refused to touch it, unless it was an emergency and his last resort. He wanted that there for her if she decided to go to college, or a trade school, or whatever. Once she was eighteen he’d give it to her. It washermoney, not his.

He did have a couple of credit cards, but they had a zero balance on them and he intended to keep them that way. They were his first-tier emergency backups, so he hopefully would never have to touch JJ’s money. It’d be too dang easy to start using them, and before he knew it they’d be at their limit, and he’d have arealemergency he’d need them for. They had enough food in the house to make do until he got paid.

Besides, he had no idea how much child care was going to cost him. If he had to tap those and had already run them up, he was screwed.

After he poured himself a mug of coffee, he headed back to his bedroom to take a shower. When he spotted his phone on the floor next to his bed it was tempting to grab it to see if Dox had replied yet but he opted to hold off. He couldn’t afford to get sidetracked and run late this morning, no matter how exhausted he was.

They were in Florida now. He would make it through today, come home, get JJ fed and bathed, and then collapse early. He wasn’t even going to screw with unpacking anything else until this weekend, if then. It could wait. Wasn’t like he had any place to put the stuff for now.

And even if he did unpack stuff, it’d only be after sleeping as late as JJ would let him Saturday and Sunday.

Another good thing about this job—he would have weekends and holidays off, meaning no worries about needing a weekend sitter. An elderly woman in their old building had taken cash to watch JJ after school and on weekends when he was working. Maybe not the ideal arrangement, but JJ had been safe and cared for there, so he couldn’t ask for much more than that.

This week, his job would let him take off early in the afternoons to get JJ, until he could arrange after-school care for her. He hoped someone at the school would be able to give him some leads. If not, he’d ask Bryce if he knew of anyone. Putting her in an expensive daycare wasn’t an option right now, unfortunately.

I just have to hang on for a few more weeks until I can breathe. It’s only going to get better from here. Ithasto get better from here.