Mrs. Avery

Chapter 15 (1 month after death)

They never talked about that night. They behaved as though that night had sorted out their circumstance. In all fairness, it might have. They knew they were both partners in this, not the best pairing that fate could have rounded up, but maybe not the worst either.

Agnes got custody with surprising ease and that even bothered her. The judge was so willing to hand them off to her and make it official. She now had more power than James, but she didn't feel that way. She felt like a thief with almost no effort. She thought there would be more digging into her life, but there wasn't.

If anyone was going to do some covert digging, it was going to be the residents of Nile. They would have this entire fiasco mapped out before the end of the week.

The next month was consumed with terminating her lease, moving out of her apartment, and all the extra inconvenience that comes with changing your address. While moving out she found the letter that had called her to help with the children. They really had tried to reach her, but she hadn't been here.

She looked around the place; Agnes loved this apartment. It had been home for so long. When she locked up the empty apartment she stood outside the door and wondered if she should try to keep it. She could sell the house to James and just stay there while she cared for the kids. She shook her head. He was too headstrong to accept that kind of help from her and he was in no financial way to buy a house. And honestly childcare was weighting heavily into her income. It was all just a lot, she decided and laid her head up against the door. She breathed out slowly and let the life she lived behind the door flash before her eyes until chaos came from down the hall.

"Come on!" Liam screamed as he came flying down the hall to her. He barreled into her a little too hard, but the tightest hug followed and she decided that helped a lot. She looked at the door a little less longingly as she squeezed him back.  James and Juli soon appeared at the end of the hall. They had come to see if she needed anymore help to wrap up the move. She didn't, but she appreciated it all the same. They picked up pizza from the city and hopped in their separate cars to head home.

During the drive home she couldn't believe that it had been a month or even that her apartment was really gone now. The move wasn't the only change that was hard. Momma's death came with quite a lot of changes, but Agnes felt well adjusted. She was functional much sooner than she expected. She was proud of herself until she was caught off guard at work. A small uncomfortable shiver ran down her spine as the incident crossed her mind.

~~~

"Agnes you're going to be late for brunch, we can look over these reports later."

Agnes just sort of froze. They were referencing the brunch she took every Tuesday, at least if not more frequently than that, with Momma. She shattered on the spot and her face twisted down.

Larry was close by and heard the remark. He quickly stepped between them.

"Miss Aggie, I've been looking for you." He wrapped his arm around her back and guided her back to her office while he ranted on. "The issue at our Georgia facility has escalated. We're seeing communication failures that are leading to productions delays and delivery misses across the board." He stopped talking immediately after closing the door. He wrapped his arms around her. "Hey, it's alright" he said softly. And she just cried against him. She hadn't had one break down at work save for this one.

"I know all that shit about our Georgia facility." She said into his shoulder.

He smiled. "Silly me."

~~~

Other than the occasional break down at home she was on top of her game. James hadn't mentioned being any closer to finding an apartment so she worried about school and things she had never done before like packing lunches and homework every night (she'd only done homework a few times with her friends kids). She wondered if she would even be able to help with homework. They were young enough she decided that she could likely help for a least a solid year before it got out of hand.