The Christmas Hope Read Online Free

heading to the office. I didn’t want salt buildup underneath, and Justin had left a trail of mud and dirt from his boots. I instructed the employees to move the seats back in order to clean well under them. They hadn’t done that last week. Once the car was clean, I drove to the office, turned on the computer at my desk, and rummaged through the Ramirez file, making sure it was updated. Weeks earlier many of the office staff had taken the last two hours of the day to decorate a small Christmas tree and hang ivy throughout the office. I made sure I had an appointment at that time so I could avoid the Christmas cheer and banter. Christmas was no longer a time of joy for me and I didn’t want to put a damper on the staff’s festivities.
    I closed a drawer in my desk and the sound made a toy fish on Roy Braeden’s desk move to the tune of “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer.” I shook my head. For the last few weeks that fish had been driving me crazy. Thankfully, the dancing Santa was broken this year, although Roy picked him up every day trying to diagnose the problem. Roy had worked for family services longer than I had. His first wife died after twenty-eight years of marriage, leaving Roy lonely and depressed. Thinking he was in love, Roy married Ella a year after his wife’s funeral. It was a mistake. Roy realized he wasn’t in love but just desperate for companionship. The marriage lasted less than two years. Now he’d been dating Barbara for four years but was gun-shy about marriage although I often told him that he was going to lose Barbara if he didn’t marry her. She was a good woman and Roy was a good man. “You’re good for each other,” I said time and again to him. Roy was a father of four, grandfather of five and counting, and a good friend. I noticed a doughnut sitting on his desk across the aisle from me and I rolled over in my chair and swiped it, taking a bite. I didn’t think of it as stealing. I thought of it as doing him a favor. His cholesterol was up and he had no business eating a greasy doughnut. I heard his voice and pushed the last of the doughnut into my mouth. He walked to his desk and stopped.
    “Patti, did you see a doughnut on my desk?”
    I leaned over to look toward his desk. “No, I don’t see anything.”
    He opened a drawer and looked inside. “I could swear I put a doughnut right here.” He started toward the lounge. “I’ll just go get another one.”
    “There’s none back there,” I said, typing.
    He threw up his hands. “All a man wants is a lousy doughnut to help him get through the day. Is that too much to ask?”
    “From my view it looks like the man has had too many doughnuts over the years.”
    He stopped and looked at me. “I guess you went into social work so you could encourage and uplift.”
    I laughed as my phone rang.
    “Do people say I’m heavy?” he asked, pulling his shirt across his belly.
    I waved my hand to get him to be quiet and picked up the receiver. It was Lynn McSwain, our supervisor. He was calling from his cell phone.
    “I may be beefy but beefy’s good,” Roy said. “Beefy’s not heavy.”
    I turned my back to him and pressed the phone closer to my ear. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll take care of her.” I hung up the phone. “Bridget Sloane was taken to County a few minutes ago,” I said, pulling a file from my cabinet.
    “What for?”
    “Selling to an undercover cop. I have to place Mia.” I shook my head, shoving files into my briefcase. “She left Mia in her crib at seven o’clock last night and never went back home.” Roy looked down at his watch. “Fifteen and a half hours,” I said, helping him do the math. “The police are at the apartment now.” Bridget Sloane was eighteen years old and the mother of a beautiful ten-month-old daughter who was an albatross around Bridget’s neck. Bridget had been on the move since she ran away from home at sixteen. If she had any idea who the father was she would have