Friends with Benefits - Nicole Blanchard Page 0,40

I’d be able to apply for the paramedic’s position at work, which would nearly double my salary and give the girls and me some cushion room instead of working paycheck-to-paycheck, like I was right now. Maybe if I also applied for custody, there’d be some sort of benefits, but I didn’t want to think about that too closely either.

The thought of being the twinkies’ legal guardian scared the crap out of me. For one thing, it was a lifetime commitment in a way that being their sister wasn’t. For another, it meant choosing to kick my mom out of my life—and by extension theirs—in a more permanent way than I’d ever done.

Change might be necessary, but it didn’t come easy.

I filled my basket with the necessities and caved on the beef stew for dinner to appease the monsters. As I was weighing my options for the meat selection, I sighed and chose the more expensive one. The girls needed to eat, and I needed leftovers for lunches. I’d simply have to ask work for more hours or find another area to skimp on.

I placed the stew meat in the buggy and looked up. There was nothing in sight save for the small pile of groceries, which I hoped would stretch to last a few days, maybe even until my next paycheck. The girls weren’t hovering by the cart where I’d left them.

They were nowhere to be found.

I didn’t panic—at first. I generally didn’t panic when it came to emergency situations. You’d think I would because of the sheer amount of anxiety that plagued me on a day-to-day basis, but when it mattered, really mattered, my brain hyper-focused on everything around me. It almost slowed the world down so that I could process the information I was receiving.

The meat aisle was barren except for me. It was a weekday afternoon, so most people were probably still at work or school. There were no displays in the aisle for them to hide behind, and the only door was to the butcher, which only opened from the inside.

“Girls?” I called out, almost hesitantly at first. Afraid that if I voiced my fears, it would breathe life to them. “Molly? Tillie?”

When they didn’t appear, I felt the first whispers of panic. Surely, they were just playing hide-and-seek. If I wasn’t so freaking worried, I’d be annoyed. Except the girls knew better than to run off when we were in public. We’d had the stranger-danger conversation on more than one occasion.

I couldn’t breathe. The thought of them being taken…No. I wasn’t going to think about that. Images of my mother stalking us and taking the twins out of spite ran through my head as I abandoned the cart and began dashing to each aisle, finding each one empty.

“Molly! Tillie!”

I heard a giggle and thought I had imagined it. Spinning around, I followed the sound to the dairy aisle, where the girls were hiding behind a stack of milk crates. My brain didn’t process their mischievous grins or cheeks pink with laughter.

“Ta-da!” Tillie shouted. “You found us. We were playing hide-and-seek.”

I fell to my knees in front of them, my heart in my throat. It would make sense to yell at them and berate them for running off in a public place, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I was so grateful they were safe that it obliterated any anger I may have felt that they were playing games.

“Emmy?” Molly asked. “Why are you crying?”

“You scared me. I thought you were lost.” Or worse. But I didn’t say that out loud for fear of scaring them, too. “Haven’t I told you not to run off when we’re in the grocery store? It’s not safe.”

“We wanted to make you laugh. You’ve been so busy lately that we thought you’d think it was fun,” Tillie said, tears in her eyes.

“Oh, babies,” I choked out. God, sometimes it felt like I couldn’t ever do anything right. Was it even fair to them to keep them with me? Would they be better off with a real family, even if that meant they weren’t with me?

One thing at a time.

At the moment, that was all I could handle.

“I’m hungry,” Molly whispered, her lips wobbling. “Can we go home?”

Swallowing hard, I took their hands in mine and led them back to our buggy. “Sure, we can. Let’s finish shopping, and we’ll go home, and I’ll make my favorite sisters some beef stew. Deal?”

The two of them climbed up in the