Act of Grace

By Becky Tucker

Life is calm and slightly boring. Until it isn't. 

Liz Malone is a typical young woman. She has two kids, two jobs, an ex who is more or less, mostly less, current with child support, a dad who wants her to take over the family business, and a mom who left them and found a new husband in Arizona.

Liz's three-year-old daughter, Grace, is taken from the neighborhood skate park while her older brother, fouteen-year-old Nico, is watching her.

How can this possibly end well? How can Liz get her life (and her child) back?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Becky Tucker
• Release date: Mar 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201666712

Book preview

Visit the author at:

www.facebook.com/beckytuckerauther

By the same author:

Seasonal Affective Disorders

Speed (Dating) Kills

The Thing About Joy

Don’t Ever Say Never

The Je Lis Bien series of French graded readers:

Histoires pour les grands

La Ville de St. Martin

La Vie de Rose et d’autres histoires

L’Hôtel de la Gare

La Visite de la Reine et d’autres histoires

L’Abécédaire des Français Fascinants

Cover art by Rubai Islam

Copyright 2022

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 9798780168102

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER

ONE

S

he said she’d loved me for five years… well, five years and six months… well, more like five years, five months and sixteen or so days… I rounded up…"

Jeez, is this guy an accountant or what?

I’m pretty sure my eyes are rolling back in my head. What have I done to bring on this oversharing moment? I just sit down next to the guy at the bar and POOF! it happens. I nod, acknowledging his presence, nothing more, just the polite thing. He nods back and asks me what I’d like to drink. And then, two minutes later, he’s mumbled his story, never looking me in the eyes. I admit I thought he was talking to the bartender at first… But, then, all of a sudden, it’s five years on, and I have no idea who ‘she’ is at all.

I need to stay long enough to sip my second drink. Yes, I have to buy him a round; I’m not rude. We clink glasses, say cheers and then, before I’m really sure what his name is and certainly before he knows mine, the five-year lady pops right back up in the middle of the conversation. She said she…

I shouldn't have even come in tonight. It's my dad's place. The bar. He recently had a fall at home and, although he has managers, he worries they are not handling the cash very well and that they are giving out too many free drinks. So, here I am, to just look around, see if I can catch someone doing something wrong. Not that I’m going to; I don't plan on staying long. Accountant-Guy is getting on my nerves, and I'm too much of an introvert to just glide around the bar, chatting with people I don’t know.

My dad wants me to get into the bar business with him. He's always assumed I will take over the empire. Not that I ever give him any reason to think that. Liz Malone is not cut out for running, owning or, jeez, even passing time in a bar. And, besides, he knows why his wife, my mom, left. Owning a bar was not what she expected her husband to do and, eventually, she chucked it all in. The late nights, the drunken mornings, the cigarette smells, the times he couldn't come to something she wanted to do, or that I had at school, all because of the bar.

Those were crazy days.

I'm an only child. They didn't even have enough time together to produce any siblings for me, one of whom may have taken over the bar. Mom pressured Dad to sell, and we all see how that turned out. Malone's is still here, and my mom is living happily in Arizona with her second husband.

Growing up is a hard job. I salute all those who have successfully managed the transition.  When my mom left, I was fourteen.  I thought it was okay. Although I would miss her, I was more of a daddy's girl. And, at fourteen, I thought I was grown. I was well into the double digits, my body had morphed into its adult form, I thought I knew everything. What could go wrong?

I think everyone knows the answer to that question. I did manage to graduate high school but didn't want to continue with any kind of higher education. I must have missed that day in Health class when they covered sex-ed and I ended up with a baby and a husband, in that order, by my 18th birthday.

My husband, or should I say, my jerk of an ex-husband, was my high-school sweetheart. Eric was a good guy, not so smart, it turns out, but he tried to make a family with me and Nico. In fact, we tried for ten years to keep it together. We even thought having another baby would be that glowing wonderful thing that settled us as a family. Meet Grace, that glowing wonderful thing that eventually broke not only the camel's back, but every other animal's back in the whole zoo.

It's fine. Really. Nico is fourteen and knows everything. That must run in the family. And Grace just turned three. Eric left town, and, although he pays child support, it is as sparse as tulips in the winter, so I have two jobs, neither of which is running my dad's bar.

Mr. Accountant nods at my glass, and I shake my head. Enough surveillance. I can tell my dad everything looked okay, even though I didn't check anything off the list he gave me. The background noise is echoing in my ears, and I'm not sure if I can be heard, so I lean in slightly and tell my drinking partner thanks and that I'm heading out. He stands when I do, as if he's going to follow me out. I put my hand up in a halt sign and give him a half-smile. I think he understands, and he sits back down.

I leave the bar. Outside, it is quiet. Malone’s doesn't have outdoor seating, even in the summer, and it's certainly not summer at the moment. I have parked about a half-block away and I hurry to the car with its less-than-adequate heater that I hope is working tonight.

I slide into the house at just past midnight. Nico has been babysitting Grace, as he often does, unfortunately. It isn’t the life I imagined for my son, but he has risen to the challenge. Plus, Grace was already asleep before I left, and she never wakes up at night. She was sleeping through at two months old and she’s never changed course. I go to her bed to smell her hair and tuck the blanket around her just a little more tightly.

Then, I knock on Nico’s door on my way to the kitchen. I should have eaten something before I had those two drinks although, to be fair, I didn’t think I’d be drinking two drinks. Thanks to Accountant-Guy, I’m a little buzzed.

Nico comes out of his room, gives me a hug and grabs one of the two brownies I have on my plate.

Night, Mom, he calls over his shoulder.

Goodnight, buddy. Put your hours down so I can pay you for babysitting, I mumble, my mouth full of chocolate.

I hear a snort and then he closes his door. So much for family time.

LIZZIE

Lizzie, time to come home!

Everyone on the block could hear my mom when she called me home. To be fair, she let me stay out as long the other kids. We ate later than nearly all my friends’ families, but that was okay. It was just the two of us for dinner nearly every night.

My dad was already at work. He left about 4:00 p.m., so sometimes I saw him if I hurried home from school. He would set out a snack, usually something my mom would disapprove of, and he would sit with me while I ate.

As he was leaving, I would tell him I would stay right there and finish my homework. I rarely did. There was still time to do work after dinner. Mom didn’t let me watch TV during the school week, so I sat in the living room on the sofa and shuffled my homework papers around while Mom knitted or read the newspaper in the chair by the best lamp.

When I finished my homework, I would lie on the sofa and read or do crossword puzzles. At 9:00, I went up to my room, and Mom came in at 9:30 to turn out the light. She didn’t check to see if I turned it back on five minutes later. Sometimes, if I couldn’t sleep, I stood at the door and listened to her cry.

ELIZABETH

I was called Lizzie until I graduated from high school. Then, I started calling myself Elizabeth. I thought it fit me better. After all, I was a married woman and a mom.

Eric worked hard to provide for us. At least, at the beginning. He helped his dad in the construction business and took odd jobs painting and helping people move. He was built for these types of jobs. Not many brain cells, but lots of brawn. Even if we had stayed together, my dad would never have thought about Eric taking over for him at the bar. Eric was family, but just barely, and he was not meant to be a boss.

We lived in a one-bedroom, 600 square foot apartment, in a complex of ten apartments. We didn’t get to know our neighbors; Eric worked with a couple of the men for a short time, but I didn’t make friends with their wives or partners or whatever. I was too in love with Nico and being a mom. My dad was allowed into the circle, and my mom would have been, if she had stuck around, but not really anyone else. My girlfriends from school were busy with college or boyfriends of their own, and, I had to face it, I was painted as the town slut, getting pregnant during high school. I mean, it wasn’t as if I were fourteen or something, and Eric and I had gone steady through school. It didn’t help that my dad owned a bar and that I didn’t, for the most part, have a mom.

Nico and I walked downtown and visited my dad when the weather was good and Nico wasn’t spitting up or crying, which was pretty often. He was such a fussy baby. I didn’t want to take him into the bar, so my dad would come outside, sit on the steps and hold Nico, even when he was crying and cranky.

Eric worked hard, but there just weren’t a lot of jobs to be had in our small town of Morley, Iowa. I told Eric I could work; he would have to stay home with the baby because we couldn’t afford a sitter. He didn’t take to that idea - he was the man and he would take care of his family. It was so obvious to everyone else that this wouldn’t end well but neither one of us saw it coming.

LIZ

I slip into bed and am asleep before I swallow my last bite of brownie. Oh, well, it’s not the first time. Since Grace is such a great sleeper, I am, too. Nico gets up when he wants, fixes his own lunch and is out the door before I stir. He doesn’t seem to mind but I feel guilt oozing out of every pore. He is growing up too fast. I should be with him more; he doesn’t need to be an adult. But life is what it is. There’s nothing I can change about mine, or his, at the moment.

I’m just out of the shower when Grace wakes up. She teeters out of bed, rubbing her little blue eyes and trailing a purple blankie behind her. She’s placid, almost world-weary. An old soul at three years old.

As with Nico, I reproach myself for not being her everything, daddy and mommy combined, best friend, play-date.

Mommy! and she hugs me, her face against my towel-draped body. Before the towel drops and this becomes X-rated, I ask Grace to go choose which cereal we will have this morning for breakfast so I can get dressed. She complies, as I know she will.

I have to briefly remember what day and time it is to know which clothes to wear. Okay, it’s Thursday. After I drop Grace off at preschool, I need to be zipping down the highway to my first job.

Grace calls to me from the kitchen. I chose, Mommy! Well, that alone time sure went fast.

CHAPTER

TWO

I

work at the county courthouse as a records clerk. If you want to get married, be buried or get tags for your car, I’m your girl. There are three of us in our office and we work behind a counter. I have to wear nice clothes on top (the only area exposed to customers) but on the bottom I can be a bit more casual. I’ve found, though, that dressing up makes me feel more professional. It’s a job, not a career, but it’s all I have, except Uber. For that job, I can wear practically anything except pajamas, but I tend toward jeans and a long-sleeved, high-necked sweater. The baggier the better.

It takes about twenty minutes to get to work. I hate to be that far away from home and the kids, but it almost pays the bills

I’m usually early to the job. This time it’s only by five minutes, but I still have time to take off my coat, fluff my hair