Meant To Be - Heaven Hill Series #1

Chapter Three

"I'm fucked," she said out loud. No one was there to hear her or to see her break down, but for the first time since this had started, she sobbed. Really sobbed. It was full body and it was ugly.

Denise sat on her couch, her head in her hands. The last year and a half had taught her many things about herself and about life. She had come to some grim realizations and some new revelations.

She wasn't as strong as she had once believed. When she had been a teenager having twins, she had taken the world by the balls and dared it to talk back to her. This time, when the economy had tanked and she had lost her job, she had cowered. For months she had sat on her living room couch, just knowing the factory would call her and tell her to come to work on Monday morning. When that hadn't happened, it had taken her a few weeks, but she dove headlong into looking for something else. It had taken months for her to find the minimum wage job she now worked at. Gone were most of their DVD's and any jewelry she'd had. Lately she'd taken to switching coins out of the cash registers at work, getting the oldest coins she could in order to take them downtown and sell them to the local coin store. That wasn't getting her very far now that her hours at work had been cut.

In the middle of her complete freak out, she heard a knock at her door and she tensed. The last three times someone had knocked on her door, it had been a disaster. She wondered if she should act like she wasn't home. Maybe the person on the other side would leave.

"Denise, I know you're in there."

It was her neighbor from up the street. Meredith Rager, the local television reporter. They had become acquaintances, perhaps friends lately, and Denise really didn't want to be alone anymore.

"Coming," she coughed, struggling to disguise the pinched tone of her voice. Mopping up her cheeks, she opened the door.

"Hey, I saw Liam Walker leaving here," Meredith started before getting a good look at Denise's face. "Did he hurt you?" she asked, sharply.

"He didn't hurt me."

"Are you sure?" Meredith asked, walking into the house. "I've dealt with these guys a couple of times when I interviewed them in front of the jail. They aren't nice people. I'm pretty sure they all have a little bit of blood on their hands."

"I'm sure. He really didn't hurt me. He was actually nicer than he probably needed to be."

Immediately, Meredith's radar was buzzing. What else had Liam Walker been doing at Denise Cunningham's house? "You're not getting involved with them are you?"

Denise didn't want to get into this. Meredith was very astute, and Denise was an open book. Calling upon those feelings that had made her so emotional earlier, Denise scrunched her face up and let a sob break through her chest.

"What's happened?" the other woman asked, worried about the single mother.

Reaching under the couch cushion, she pulled out the foreclosure paperwork. "I got served with these yesterday, and I just don't know what to do anymore."

Grabbing the papers from Denise's hand, Meredith looked over it, her eyebrows drawing together in concentration. "Shit," she breathed. "This amount isn't going to be easy to come up with."

"I know," Denise cried. Usually she wouldn't be putting her business out there for just anyone to know, but besides Roni, Meredith was the only friend Denise had. "I just don't know what I'm going to do. This is the only home my children have ever known, and now they're going to lose it."

Meredith's heart ached. She had grown up in a family where money wasn't an issue. It wasn't like they were extravagantly wealthy, but there had never been a week where they had to order off the dollar menu because they weren't able to afford food. This was not her reality, and she wasn't familiar with it, but she could at least be sympathetic.