So things were looking up.
Her kids weren’t even giving her a lot of grief about moving in with Santana. Both Bianca and Jeremy had grudgingly started sorting through their things as Pescoli had told them she refused to move junk that was only going to somehow multiply and fill the closets in their new place.
The move was a month or two off, but Pescoli, now that she’d made up her mind to marry Santana, wasn’t about to put up with any procrastination. Though she still harbored some doubts about her mothering skills, she’d pushed them aside. She could only do the best she could do.
Unfortunately, Dan Grayson hadn’t yet awoken. He’d stabilized enough that there was talk of moving him to a neurological facility in Seattle that specialized in brain trauma, but so far, he was still at Northern General in Missoula, so Sturgis would be residing with her family for the foreseeable future.
Cade Grayson had stopped by and offered to take the dog, but Pescoli liked having the black Lab around; he kept Cisco on his tiny toes, so she’d asked to keep him. Since then, she’d also heard that Cade was wrestling with the news that he was the father of eight-year-old twins. With his older brother still so seriously ill, she saw why he hadn’t argued with her for the added responsibility of the black Lab.
Which brought Hattie Grayson to mind. “You know that Dan’s sister-in-law still thinks her husband was murdered,” she mused aloud.
Alvarez said, “Still?”
“She seems to be waffling some, but she called me, asked that I keep the case open.”
Alvarez pushed her plate aside. “That case is closed tighter than a coffin lid.”
“If I’m not too busy, I might take another look. Bart was Grayson’s brother, and if there’s any chance she’s right . . .”
“When won’t you be too busy?” Alvarez asked her. “Besides the job, you do have two kids still and a fiancé. And the promise of shorter hours.”
“I know,” she said and was tempted to confide in her partner, then thought better of it. Time enough in the future. They finished their lunch and later in the day, true to her word of shortening her hours, Pescoli left the station early. She really couldn’t imagine never working here again, for as much as she loved Santana, being a cop was in her blood, as, apparently, it was in her son’s.
She drove out of the lot and all the way across town to a pharmacy where she was assured of not running into anyone she knew; then she climbed back into her Jeep and headed home. She knew the kids were out, Jeremy working and Bianca with her newest BFF, Lana, a girl who was on the soccer team and who, if anything, was a little on the stocky side. Though Bianca was still “watching what she ate” to fit in that damned two-piece, at least she was eating.
Pescoli was still monitoring her.
Once she was home, she let the dogs out and threw a ball for Sturgis, so that he ran across the yard, Cisco at his heels, enough times to wear him out. Then she fed them both, changed into her pajamas, and made her way to the bathroom where she unwrapped the home pregnancy kit she’d purchased and read the simple instructions.
“Here we go,” she whispe
red and did everything instructed.
A scant five minutes later, it was confirmed: In less than eight months, she would become a mother once more and the whole cycle of parenthood would start all over again.
Oh, joy.