Zero Forks - Cat Johnson Page 0,5
and then back to the waitress.
Until now, I’d had no concept of how challenging Liza’s life was as a single mom. I was rapidly learning.
But juggling take-out food and sleeping children was the least of my worries. It was becoming apparent that the logistics of this babysitting gig weren’t going to work.
Thanks to getting the new account, I’d be working harder and more hours than ever before. I obviously needed full-time childcare.
I’d googled the duration of shingles and found it could be well over a month before my dad would be clear. And there was a good possibility my mother would have caught it by then and the cycle would start all over again. It was obvious they wouldn’t be up for tending Stewie for a while.
My apartment was tiny, so I couldn’t move Stewie into my place with me long term. My sister lived too far from where I worked, so staying at her place was out of the question.
I was going to have to somehow find a short-term rental for us for at least the next couple of months.
It was a lot, but that was all taking a backseat to my concern that if Stewie woke up alone in the car while I was in the diner, he was going to flip the hell out. Then I’d be arrested for sure.
Blowing out a loud breath I turned back to try to catch the waitress’s attention and ask her how much longer it would be for the order I’d placed.
She walked by and I called out, “Excuse me.”
“Yeah?”
“I have a three-year old asleep in the car outside. Is there any way you could put a rush on my order?”
Preferably, before all hell broke loose and the cops showed up.
The waitress cringed. “The kitchen’s pretty slammed but if you want, you can go out and wait in the car and I’ll run the order outside to you when it’s ready.”
I jumped at her offer. “You’d do that?”
“Sure.” She nodded.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you.” I’d thank her even more with cold hard cash in the form of a tip later.
“No problem,” she replied before skittering off to deal with a woman waving at her from the other end of the counter.
That problem solved, I ran outside to the car and tried the door.
Locked.
Of course I’d locked it. I didn’t want Stewie to be kidnapped on my watch. But I’d only brought my wallet into the diner. Not my purse. So where were the keys?
Leaning in I peered through the window . . . and spotted the keys dangling from the ignition.
Holy shit. How could I have done that? Locked my keys in the car with the kid?
Jeez, I was a horrible babysitter.
Chances where good I was going to accidentally kill or maim him yet. Then I’d be in prison where I wouldn’t have to worry about rentals or ad campaigns.
Drawing in a breath, I looked around, panicked. There were a ton of cars parked out here, and the diner had been packed inside, but there wasn’t a soul outside on the sidewalk.
Panicked, I realized my cell phone was also inside the car, in the holder on the dashboard where it had been giving me GPS directions from my sister’s place to my apartment.
Mouthing another obscenity, I glanced around me again, completely at a loss. I could go inside and ask to use the diner’s phone to call the auto club to come break into my car for me, but then I’d have to admit I’d locked my nephew inside.
I didn’t relish that idea. But I also couldn’t let Stewie wake up and realize he was trapped inside.
Could a kid his age open the car locks if I talked him through it? I had no idea.
I was so unprepared for this task it was criminal—literally.
There was no way around it. I was just going to have to give in, go back into the diner and beg for help.
Fighting tears, I covered my face and groaned in frustration.
“Problem?” The manly voice had me peeking between my fingers to see the insanely good-looking twenty-something guy I’d noticed in the diner before.
The hot one who, if I weren’t crazy, had been checking me out. The one who was much too young for me to be thinking of as hot to begin with or assuming he’d be interested in a woman my age.
Nope. I wasn’t going to ask him for help. No way. I’d take a chance on the auto club getting here before Stewie