Texas Nights - Book 13 of the Damned of the 2/19th

Before It's Too Late

That was what stopped the lazy, self-pitying introspection.

High school sweet heart. Yeah, women had them. Most did.

I had not.

I was too tall. Too gawky. Too "big" to use their words. Not fat. Fat was comforting, sweet cushion to many men. I was muscular, my body hardened by farm work from my foster home, and later on Grammy's small farm.

So I hadn't had a high school sweet heart.

I took the feelings and looked at them closer.

Would it have been a terrible loss if I'd gotten pregnant in High School, using sex to get affection until the inevitable accident that left me a single mother?

Yes.

How much of Atlas would have died without me? What would have happened in Panama without me? In Iraq if I'd been pregnant again, watching the war on CNN, instead of being out there?

How many would have died?

I sighed, lighting another cigarette.

The fact I hadn't had a high school sweet heart was a good thing. I had no ties to my hometown, with Grammy dead there wasn't even that little bit since the State of California had seized her farm to pay for my foster care.

Betcha didn't know about that, didja?

See, the State always recouped its losses. I'd needed dental work. Braces for misaligned teeth. And I'd had to be put in Foster Care after my parents had died. That cost the State money. So first they seized everything my parents had owned, including that little house where there were so many terrible secrets behind its doors, then Grammy's little farm after she died.

I picked up the letter from the State of California, able to read it in the dark.

They wanted more money. According to them, after the estate sales and everything else, they still wanted another twenty-two-thousand dollars to completely pay for my Foster Care. The letter was to inform me that they would be deducting money from my paycheck to pay for it.

Talk about insult to injury.

They of course, were magnanimous and offered to let me pay it in one lump sum.

The words on the paper still shocked me. They wanted me to pay for the food stamps my Foster parents had gotten for having me. They wanted me to pay back the money they gave my foster parents to offset the cost of having me in the house. They wanted me to pay back the money for doctor's bills and dentist's bills. They had sold my parent's house in 1982, seized Grammy's house while I was in Desert Storm, sold it three months ago, and there was still $22K to go before the State felt my gratitude had been shown.

I was tempted to send them one of my Purple Hearts to tell them that I'd paid the State back already.

Instead, I planned on going to JAG, getting a lawyer, and fighting it.

Part of me knew that if I'd gotten knocked up, gone on Welfare, and lived in a trailer in some crappy trailer park in SoCal, I'd never had seen this bill.

But instead, it felt like they were punishing me for daring to excel.

What got me was the fact that I was supposed to be grateful or something. I had been grateful for California putting me through Foster Care, rather than letting me live on the streets or in some orphanage.

Right until I'd opened this letter.

Anger, always there, began to burn in my stomach as I stubbed out my cigarette. I folded the piece of paper, set it on my desk, and started my katas again. Moving slow, steady, rather than fast and violent. Settling my mind, centering my spirit. Slowly the anger simmered away, leaving me calm and relaxed.