Forever Beach by Shelley Noble Read Free Book Online

hospital, she’d had to pull her car to the side of the street to throw up on the pavement.
    Next she had gone to the emergency room, where she walked into a scene of shouting and hitting. Pete was hysterical and lashing out. He believed they were stealing his brothers; he couldn’t be quieted and they wouldn’t sedate him until they’d done an initial examination. So it fell to Reesa to tell him the truth.
    Truth? What was the truth? That your mother was so strung out that she didn’t bother to take care of you. That she’d let you die before she’d give up her drugs? That was the truth, but she didn’t have the heart to tell him so. She told him everything would be all right. They both knew she was lying.
    Once he and his brothers were admitted, Reesa had gone back to the office to file her report. She would have to justify removing the children without a court order. She was pretty sure she had justification. She certainly wouldn’t lose sleep over her decision.
    She punched her pillow and closed her eyes trying to recreate the wonderful feeling she’d had on Monday seeing Jamie and Joy Valenti reunited to their family. Sometimes the system did work. Mr. Valenti had a new job, and family services had helped them find an affordable apartment. With a little luck . . .
    That’s what she was thinking of when her eyes grew heavy.
    But she fell asleep on the images of that comatose baby, his brother too weak to move as he slowly starved. Pete and his loaf of bread. And the hysterical woman who kept screaming “don’t take my babies.”
    But tomorrow . . . tomorrow she would be back at the office. And tomorrow she would make certain that nothing bad happened to Leila Rodrigues.
    I T WAS ALMOST eight o’clock by the time Sarah stopped the car back at her bungalow. Leila had fallen asleep practically before they were out of the Wolcotts’ driveway.
    It had been a fun evening, and she’d managed to take her mind off her coming battle for a few hours. And now she had clock repairs to do. Hopefully by the time she went to bed, she’d be tired enough to sleep.
    She put Leila to bed, then went onto the back porch that she used as a secondary workshop. It was enclosed but not weatherproofed, which made it pretty hot in the summer and impossible to use during the winter. But since Leila was going to a preschool day-care program five days a week in the summer, Sarah did most of her work in the back of the shop.
    Their schedule worked well; it gave Sarah time for the shop while Leila played catch-up to the other kids, still leavingenough mother-daughter time in the afternoons and evenings. Sarah had been very encouraged by Leila’s last evaluations. Now if they just didn’t have a major setback.
    As soon as she sat down at her workbench, anxiety fell away. Clocks had a way of doing that. Steadying the pulse, driving out the fears with their quiet repetition.
    Tonight she was working on a black mantel clock that had belonged to the parlor of a Victorian house from the neighborhood. The family was cleaning it out to sell and they’d discovered the clock, wrapped in a sheet and tucked away in a closet. When they brought it in, the inner workings had rattled around on the inside.
    Sarah told them she would give it her best shot but didn’t have much hope. She’d persevered, though, and now it was close to running correctly. Close but still not perfect.
    People brought in clocks that were barely recognizable; they found them in attics, or flea markets, or on street curbs. Sometimes they’d tried to fix a clock themselves and couldn’t put it back together, or dropped it and shoved it out of sight until they suddenly discovered it again.
    Some repairs seemed effortless; others like they were hardly worth the trouble. But Sarah always tried her best. Because they deserved a second chance.
    Sometimes she could almost feel Sam’s hands lightly over