Forever Love (The Women of Manatee Bay Book 3) by Jessica Nelson

Author:Jessica Nelson [Nelson, Jessica]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Jessica Nelson LLC
Published: 2015-01-07T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Two days later, Maggie didn’t regret her words. She’d left Joe in the kitchen and soon after he left Mama’s, going his separate way.

He hadn’t called her since.

Scowling and ornery, Maggie trudged across the apartment parking lot as raindrops splattered across her face. The garbage bag ties bit into her fingertips as she dragged them across the ground. They’d better not tear on the way or she’d really throw a fit.

At least she’d cleaned out the guest room. It was something she’d been putting off for a long, long time but with a tornado warning until evening, she had no choice but to leave work. An empty home bored her. With Faith working at the dentist’s office all day and Rachel driving back from Miami, nothing was left but housework for company.

Somehow she managed to slog through bills, clothes and the mounds of Manatee Bay's Home for Mothers paperwork littering her desk.

A spear of lightning pierced the sky, followed by a deafening crack of thunder. She quickened her pace. Lifted a heavy black lid. Ew. The dumpsters stunk like a cross between a skunk and Mama’s fridge. Holding her breath, she threw the bags in and dropped the lid down just as another boom shook the sky.

She swiped her hair out of her eyes and for a moment stood beneath the slops of rain. They drenched her face and the droplets were as warm as the air. Thick, gray clouds bunched across the horizon, portent of a wicked night. Despite the muggy temperature, she shivered.

She started back to her house then groaned when she saw some papers soaked to the blacktop. Plucking them from the ground, she jogged back to the dumpsters, her flip-flops making a wet, sucking noise.

When she stopped to toss the garbage, the wet noise continued. Definitely not her shoes. It almost sounded like someone crying. In the rain. Which was the saddest thing in the world. She hoped it was only a stray cat, messing around behind the dumpster. The sound came again, quieter, as though the crier knew someone listened.

Unsure, Maggie paused. Thunder pealed again and she made her decision.

Angling around the dumpster, she almost tripped over the girl huddled against its side.

Rain sloshed over the teen’s black hair, pasting it to her pale face and dripping into her dark brown eyes. The girl scowled, her pretty lips twisting into an ugly half-circle that pulled her multiple lip rings down.

Memory rushed Maggie. She’d met this girl before. The widow’s granddaughter, at the church picnic. Andi, not Andrea. That seemed to be a big deal to her.

“Hey, do you remember me?” she asked the girl in a tone low on authority and high on curiosity. The last thing she wanted to do was get on the teen’s bad side. Not when the girl so obviously needed help.

“Leave me alone.” Andi hunched further into herself. Her arms rounded her knees and her fingers clasped together, bone white.

Maggie squatted down, eye level with the fifteen year old. “I met you at the picnic a few weeks ago.

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