“Nope. Not a thing, Lace,” he said, sending his friend a look that said otherwise.
Zach gave a terse wave, and the two disappeared around a bulkhead.
Yup. Damned strange.
Lace decided not to let it bother her as she settled back in under the small Bimini tarp she’d set up that would keep a good deal of the sun from hitting her directly.
She opened her computer and took up where she left off.
Lace had earlier completed several heartbreaking chapters that outlined how to detect, understand, and respond to the emotional traumas that many foster children experienced. To say that she’d had tears in her eyes, was an understatement. These kids… These poor kids. The things a lot of them had seen at such a tender age, defied description. And to think, Inez was dealing with cancer on top of all that.
Help is on the way, she sent winging across the waves, hoping a little of her optimism would make its way into Inez’s head.
Lace clicked a new heading, and moved on to some dryer material; the legal and ethical responsibilities of foster parenting. After reading the first few paragraphs, Lace settled in relaxedly. So far it all seemed like common-sense stuff.
Once she’d skimmed and understood everything, she snuck a peak ahead for what she’d see next when she wasn’t busy, notingthat the final section was on the importance of having a support network.
That would be the easiest of all.
Lace couldn’t ask for a better back-up partner than Vince. And of course, the entire Sothard clan would lend the kind of helping hands that Lace hadn’t enjoyed in an extremely long time.
Excitement gripped her.
This whole thing—becoming a foster parent with Vince—was growing more real in her mind by the minute.
She could actually picture herself—post cancer-treatments of course—with Vince and a child, playing in the back yard, fishing, camping, and just hanging out like a family over the dinner table.
Those were the things she’d missed down to her very core after her grandparents had passed.
Inez popped into Lace’s mind’s eye.
Even though Lace had tried not to let herself get too eager over the girl who’d already stolen parts of her heart, it was always Inez starring as the small cherub in her visions.
But what if it didn’t work out?
Lace shook away the negativity.
Vince had said his mother had some kind of connections that would grease the wheels to make it possible for the little girl to foster with them.
Lace was really putting all her hopes in the woman’s magic, which meant she was probably jumping the gun and setting herself up for disappointment, but dreaming was something that had always gotten Lace through the worst of times.
She wasn’t about to stop, now.
Oh.
There was one other part to her imaginings.
A baby.
Butthatwas a completely different aspiration, and one that might or might not be attainable.
She’d read up.
Nothing wasevercertain after the treatments Lace would undergo, but for an otherwise healthy woman of her age, the chance of getting her periods back and becoming pregnant to carry a healthy baby to term were somewhere around sixty-five percent.
Not great odds, but not terrible, either.
Having talked it all over with Bobbie—prior to starting chemo and before even an inkling of there being a Vince in her life—her friend had urged her to bank some eggs, just in case. Which Lace had done.