Keeping It in the Family (Linstead)

Chapter 107

BOOK EIGHT

There was a lot going on in the lives of Jay Halstead and Erin Lindsay. Pregnancy was one thing of course. Three months in, Erin now had a bump, and was experiencing weird cravings the likes of which Jay had never known before. One night, he had seen her go through an entire tub of ice cream that was intended for two people to share. It had actually been a remarkable feat, he supposed.

Work had been extraordinarily busy. The fact that Erin was now on desk duty didn't help, as he was put in charge of the operational side of the team, but then had to report everything back to her when they got back to the bullpen. It didn't make for efficient operation in his view, but she was the boss and that was the way she wanted it. At least the team had its full compliment of staff now, with Zelina Vega almost back at full fitness after the shooting. She had recently returned to the police academy, where special provisions had been made for the fact that she was so far behind the rest of her class through no fault of her own.

The stress didn't stop at the 21st, either. With a baby on the way, there was no way the apartment they were living in was going to be big enough. Erin had originally bought it to live in alone. Now it housed her, Jay, Clementine, and quite often Kayla Braxton too. It was already too small for that, with Kayla having to fold the couch out into a bed and sleep there when she was required to stop over. Before the baby came, they absolutely had to already be living in a new place that could house the entire family properly. Considering that they wanted to buy a place, and therefore had needed to arrange a mortgage, they had to find somewhere they liked fast and get the process moving. The bureaucracy was going to be a nightmare, even with the mortgage provider in place.

That was why Jay found himself with Erin and Clementine in an empty four bedroom house on a Saturday afternoon. The real estate agent had just shown them around, before going outside to let them have a second look around by themselves. It was the fourth house they had seen, and unlike the first three, this one felt like a contender to Jay. It wasn't too far away from downtown for work, wasn't too from Clementine's school for Kayla's morning and afternoon school runs, and it wasn't in a bad neighbourhood. It was also spacious, and had a decent-sized garden. Those were the plus points. The down sides were that it wasn't in the best condition. The kitchen and both bathrooms were serviceable, but badly needed replacing, and the decoration needed a lot of work. The price was also high for their budget, despite the owner wanting a quick sale. They were coming to realise that they couldn't afford everything they wanted in the current climate, and without the luxury of waiting, they were going to have to make compromises.

"What do you think of it, Clem?" Jay asked her.

Clementine took off her baseball cap and scratched her head while considering the question. "I like it, and it would be sick to have a garden again. But the kitchen is from the seventies. It's nasty."

Jay really disliked the habit she had picked up of using the word sick to describe everything good, but now wasn't the time to have another conversation about that. Her comment about the kitchen made him laugh. "I think it's from the nineties, Clem, but I get your point."

"It is crap," Erin conceded. "I like the layout of the place though, and I like the location. The problems it has aren't things that can't be updated. This might be the one, Jay."

He was starting to get the same feeling himself. In his mind, he pictured himself, Erin, Clem and their son or daughter outside, playing in the garden. It was a wonderful mental image.

"Let's look around again," he suggested.

Clementine tore off up the stairs. "Mom, can I have the room at the top?"

It had taken a couple of months before it felt like it came naturally for Clementine to use the words mom and dad instead of Erin and Jay, but they were now past that point and it felt like it had always been that way. As far as all three of them were concerned now, Clem wasn't an adopted child, she was theirs plain and simple. She hadn't forgotten about her birth parents of course, there were still days when the loss hurt her a lot. But now she was at least safe in the knowledge that she had a mom and dad who loved her just as much as those who had been taken from her.