The Boot (Book 1)

Chapter Twenty-Three

TIM

It's been a few days since everything went down, and it has been relatively uneventful so far. However, that's not always a bad thing. Bailey, John, and Sebastian were slowly working on introducing the kids, allowing them plenty of time to adjust to such a big life change.

Meanwhile, I've unfortunately had to return to work. Yes, my boss has granted me unlimited paid time off, but I didn't want to risk pushing his generosity too far. Besides, Lucy has insisted that it's not good for me to spend all day by her side, fawning over her. She reminded me that routine is healthy, and if she couldn't get out of the hospital and get a break from all this, at least I could.

Today, the LAPD station is a bit short-staffed, and my boss felt he could spare me, so I'm here to help out.

"Bradford," Sargeant Gray calls me into his office. Uh oh. I literally just got here, not even five minutes ago. Did I somehow manage to do something wrong within that short window of time? Sure, it's been a while since I've worked here, but surely the rules and regulations couldn't have changed that much by now, right?

"Is everything okay, sir?" I ask as the door closes behind me. I truly had no idea what to expect, so I braced myself for the worst.

"You tell me."

"Excuse me?"

"There was a bit of a..." he pauses as if searching for the right words. "Kerfuffle, earlier, and I was hoping that you may be able to shed some light on the situation."

"Oh, sure, sir. What happened?"

"Please, stop with all that 'sir' nonsense. You're a sergeant now, too. I'm not above you anymore."

"Right, my apologies."

"Anyways, this morning, well... why don't you just see for yourself."

He gestures to the chair across from his desk and I sit down, followed by him turning his monitor around so that I can see it.

It's a video feed dated today at around 8:30 in the morning, not even an hour ago. I see Genn, sporting her new prosthetic leg. But I also see my parents. What were they doing at the station? Wait... what were they even doing* back in the States?

*A/N: While I was typing this chapter my cat stepped on my keyboard and she typed this hehe: nhjyu780-

Ever since they retired a while back, my mom has been begging our dad for them to travel the world. But obviously, that's expensive as hell, especially in this economy. So for the past couple of years, they have been saving up for a big trip. But since the world is huge and there are so many places to go, they decided to break it up a bit and would be going by continent. Even then, the continents in and of themselves are massive, so they've broken it up a bit more.

A/N: I'm not entirely sure how accurate all of this is, I'm just going off of what I found when I looked it up. If something isn't correct, I apologize

They break up how much time they spend where depending on the continent. For example, Asia being one of the biggest continents, they have it separated out into six legs, whereas Antarctica and Australia have only two.

Last year, they focused on Australia. Since there were only two legs of that trip, they got to slow down and take their time to really just enjoy the country, spending three months on each leg. The first leg was more focused on the 'tourist' part, spending most of their time in Sydney and the surrounding areas, which included some sightseeing of the Great Barrier Reef. The second leg was spent exploring the Australian Outback.

They don't want to be traveling all day every day the whole year round, because that could easily result in burnout. So they structured it where they would spend the first half of the year, January through June traveling, and then spend the other half of the year, July through December at home, that way they would be able to spend the majority of holidays with family, like the 4th of July, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.