Total pages in book: 85
Estimated words: 82186 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 411(@200wpm)___ 329(@250wpm)___ 274(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 82186 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 411(@200wpm)___ 329(@250wpm)___ 274(@300wpm)
“I appreciate that.”
“If I live to be a thousand, I will never get why all the windows,” she muttered as she left the room. “Do you guys want coffee or anything?” I heard her ask the marshals before the door closed behind her.
Getting up, I moved to the side of the bed and looked down at Sam. They drugged him; it was the only possible reason he didn’t wake up with me looming over him. He could always tell, and one eye normally opened up just a slit. Leaning in, I kissed his forehead, and even in his sleep, he smiled just a bit. Lying back down on the recliner, I turned sideways so I was facing him, bunched the thin blanket around me, and would have closed my eyes, but he murmured my name.
“Sam?” I whispered.
“Love you,” he mumbled, and then his breathing evened out.
I cried again, but it was okay because they were happy tears the second time around.
MAY 2021
Hello, all, Jory Harcourt here with my May 2021 He Said, he said. You know, back in March our family picture was in the paper because we were involved in a hostage situation at our favorite Italian restaurant. Well, around the third week of April, many of you probably saw that Sam was involved in a hostage situation out at Elgin. I can tell you now that it involved a prisoner who tried to escape federal custody during a transfer. It ended up that Sam foiled the escape attempt, but not without injury. He was shot in the process, and after a three-day stay in the hospital, a feat I’m certain will never be duplicated, as Sam hates hospitals almost as much as going to the dentist, he was released and has been at home convalescing for a week.
He needs to go back to work.
At first, it was fine. He was still on his pain medication, so he was just a bit loopy; he slept a lot, and he was easy to please. Whatever we wanted to eat sounded great to him. Whatever movies we were up for, he was in. And video games he would just watch, because he might nod off in the middle.
Then he started to feel better.
Having a knight who is used to charging out on a daily basis to make the world a better place, at home, on the couch, sitting, doing nothing, is only asking for trouble. He’s in everyone’s business, and I’m starting to get murderous glances from my children.
“Why?” he barked at Kola as he sat on the couch, on a Saturday afternoon, the day before Mother’s Day, with a game controller in his hand. “How do you get kicked off a project to build homes for the unhoused?”
It had been coordinated through the marshals’ service, and because Sam couldn’t go, Chris Becker went in his place, and Sam sent the kids—though no one there but the marshals knew they were his—but after a couple hours, Chris had called Sam and told him he was sending them home. It wasn’t working out.
“I have no idea,” Kola assured his father before he left for the basement to put Sam’s tool belt back.
“And you two,” Sam growled at Hannah and Jake, gesturing at them with the game controller. “What do you have to say for yourselves?”
“Dad, the woman in charge was ridiculous,” Hannah informed her father. “She didn’t want to hear Jake’s recommendations at all. I mean, seriously, he knows what he’s talking about from a construction standpoint.”
My husband glanced at me.
“And yes, a lot of the girls wanted to be on Kola’s team. Is that his fault?”
Second look that was now a scowl from the chief deputy.
“Harper tried to explain about the wiring as well.”
“It was a mess,” Harper chimed in when he joined us, having forgotten his phone in the car and gone back to grab it. “You should have seen the electrician’s schematics,” he said, rolling his eyes, taking a seat on the other end of the couch from Sam. “All those houses are going to go up like Roman candles the second someone turns on a light.”
Or… not. I suspected that the nice people who were building homes for those in need had been doing it for just a bit, and two college students giving them advice might have been a skosh annoying. That was what Ian said when he called Sam back, since Chris was busy schmoozing with the mayor and others.
Kola was a girl magnet, and nothing was getting done. Harper was matter-of-fact, and people liked him but still wanted him to go away. Jake they just wanted to throttle or hit with something heavy. Hannah, with the streaming on TikTok, was great at helping the cause, but did she know how to use a hammer?
“Keep your kids at home,” Ian told Sam. “Thanks, but no, thanks.”