Chapter 14
Minutes later, they were all in Hope’s car. “Okay, what’s this about?” Gracie asked as Hope carefully maneuvered her way out of the narrow, crowded alley behind the café.
Hope took a quick, deep breath and let it all out. “I found Derek. Or rather, Mrs. Caputo found him, and I’m going to go confront him and ask him why he left. I didn’t want to involve any of you, but my gut keeps telling me I shouldn’t do this alone—that I need all of you.” Silence greeted her and she took a quick look around to make sure they were all still there. “Are you all with me?” she asked when they didn’t move. It’s like they were doing the mannequin challenge. “I mean, you don’t have to come along if you don’t want to,” she added. Their reaction was odd. Up until that moment, she’d thought they’d all have gone to the ends of the earth for one another.
Gracie, who was sitting in the back seat behind Grandma Sherry, was the first to speak. “Of course we’re with you. This is a lot to take in, that’s all.”
“It is. Who’s Mrs. Caputo? Where does Derek live? Is he expecting you?” Paige began to fire away.
“A private investigator. Derek lives in Augusta, Kentucky, a small town not two hours away. No.”
They were quiet again as they took it in. “Are you sure about this?” Gracie asked next.
“No. But I need to act. I can’t take this much more, and all I can think of is getting closure. Everyone’s always talking about getting closure, so there must be something to it.”
Grandma Sherry let out a long, heavy sigh. “Closure is overrated, Hope.”
Hope stopped at the red light, looked over, and frowned. “How can it be, if it can bring peace? All I need is peace.”
Her grandmother put her hand on hers. “Closure is the sense of resolution, not resolution itself, and when people talk about it as if it has some kind of magical power to heal, they ignore the fact that some situations are never resolved. Only acceptance brings peace.”
Hope shook her head as she drove on. “That makes no sense. I accepted the fact that he left years ago, and it’s not like I’ve ever wanted him back. I need him to tell me to my face why he left. I need him to explain. And please don’t tell me it’s not about Derek leaving when Derek is all I can think about when I let all the anger and turmoil in.” She banged on the steering wheel. “I need to talk to him one last time, to tell him what I think, but forgive him, too. That’s closure. That will be resolution. That will bring peace, because I’ll finally have let it all out.”
“Shhh. Calm down, sweetie,” Grandma Sherry tried to soothe her. “You’re driving, and you need to stay calm. I’m sorry I got you all riled up. It wasn’t my intention. I see now you need to do this, and of course, we’ll be there.”
“Right,” Paige said from the back. Both her sisters leaned forward to put a hand on her shoulder.
“Would you like me to drive?” Grandma Sherry asked.
“No!” the three of them exclaimed in unison, and it at least made them all laugh. Well, all of them except Grandma Sherry.
A little less than two hours later, Hope was sitting in front of a large plastics-manufacturing complex. “How do you know he’ll be coming out that door?” Gracie asked.
“Mrs. Caputo sent me pictures. She was very thorough. He should be walking out in five to ten minutes, and only three other people leave at eight through that door, so we should have privacy.”
They were quiet again, like they’d been the entire way. Hope could sense the hesitation behind every question. Paige cleared her throat, and Hope knew another difficult question was coming. “What—what else did she tell you about him, if you’d like to share, that is. You don’t have to.”
Hope took in a quick breath and let it out. “He has two kids. He has a good, steady job. He divorced the mother of his kids but then married her again. She’s a social worker.” She pointed to a black Ford Ranger parked nearby. “And that’s his truck.”
They were quiet again, and Hope could guess what was on their minds. They were probably trying to piece his last ten years together, too. That he and his wife had divorced and then married again implied they’d worked on their marriage. That she was a social worker could explain why she had giving him a second chance. But it was all conjecture.
The door opened, two workers came out, and Hope’s heart seized. For the first time in her life, she didn’t have a plan. She hadn’t even tried to come up with one. It would have been useless. All she could feel was the need to rail. “What will you do when you see him come out?” Grandma Sherry asked.
“I’m going to get out, call his name, and ask him if he has a moment to talk.”
The door opened again, and Derek walked out. He looked exactly like the photo Mrs. Caputo had provided…and exactly as he’d looked all those years ago. Boyish. Handsome. Hair a little too long. Hooded eyes that made him look like he didn’t care—until he looked up and smiled and made you feel like you were something special because you’d said something clever or made some plan that had made the moody boy laugh or look ahead instead of feeling stuck.
Hope hadn’t been prepared for much, she’d decided to plow ahead and wing it for the first time ever, but she certainly hadn’t expected tears to immediately spring to her eyes or for her heart to pound in anger. She got out of the car and made her way to the pickup. The only thing keeping her from running up to him and pounding on his chest was the fact that there were two other people getting into their cars.
When he walked up to the driver’s side, she came around the back. “Derek!” she called, using all her will and might to fight back angry tears.
He looked. He blinked. His eyes widened. He dropped his keys. “H-Hope!” he exclaimed, stuttering as he bent to pick up the keys. His hands trembled, too. He’d never been the nervous type. “What are you, what, what are you doing here?”
“I came to talk. You can do that, can’t you? Spare one moment to talk to me? Or is one moment of your time still too much to ask?” You coward, she wanted to added, but that would make him leave and she needed to know.
“S—sure. Um, climb in.” He swept his hand toward the passenger side. When she was sitting next to him, he took a breath, looked over and asked. “Is this okay? Or would you like to go somewhere else?” His voice was steady now, as if he’d pulled himself together after the shock.
It was she who was trembling now. What did she want to say? What did she want to know? “This is fine,” she said. She closed her eyes, and without warning, a few tears fell. She put her hands over her eyes. “I hate you, Derek. I hate you,” she whispered, the emotional words out of her mouth before she could stop them.
A short, hard sigh. “I know. I’m sorry.”
She flung her hands away from her eyes to look at him. “Why?”
He pinched his nose. “It was too much, too soon. I couldn’t handle it.”
For some reason, that calmed her tears. His answer was simple. Easy. And what she’d always known. “From the moment we walked down the courthouse steps,” she said, staring ahead, not bothering to wipe the tears that were drying on her face.
She felt rather than saw him nod beside her. “One moment I was relieved, ’cause I was out of my old man’s dump, and you’d figure it all out, the next…” He sighed again, shook his head, and shifted. “Janie said you might show up one day. But I looked you up every now and then, saw you were doing great, and I was proud of you. I really was. I still am, believe it or not. I look back, and you were my only friend. But I figured you’d moved on, relieved that I was out of your hair.”
“As relieved as you were?”
He looked down. “I was relieved, yes. I’m sorry. I’m not proud of that.”
Something in her shifted uncomfortably. “What happened on the courthouse steps?” she asked, needing to go back to that.
“I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“What changed?”
“It was another trap,” he said, turning to her, looking angry for the first time, too. “Couldn’t you see it? I saw it the moment we walked out all married. It was another trap, for both of us. You had your family. I had you. And you would lead me to places I wasn’t sure I wanted to go. And I was right. I didn’t want what you wanted.”
They were both quiet then, as Hope tried to go back in her mind, to that moment, and understand. Is this what she needed? To be told they weren’t compatible? She’d figured that out not long after he did, when he’d withdrawn and couldn’t say why.
“And then you announced you were pregnant—”
Hope froze. Everything inside her froze. “Don’t.”
“Don’t…?”
“Don’t mention her.”
“It was a girl.” He was dumfounded.
Hope turned to him, feeling as if she would implode from everything she was keeping inside. “You strangled me until I had no air to give my baby, and you didn’t even know she was a girl!”
“I what?”
“You strangled me! You choked me! You left long before you left and you wouldn’t say why. You wouldn’t talk, no matter how much I begged. I was confused and lost and I couldn’t breathe. And my stress killed her while she was still inside me because my heart couldn’t breathe! I didn’t mean to, but I had no air. My chest hurt. Every moment of every day. How could you? How could I let you?” Hope was raging now, and it didn’t feel like peace or closure or any of the crap she’d promised herself. It felt like she couldn’t breathe. Again. She opened the door, stumbled out, and made her way back to her car. Derek followed her, but they both stopped short when they saw her grandmother and sisters standing by her car.
“I didn’t—I didn’t know. I didn’t mean to do that. I was young and stupid,” he said.
“Don’t,” Hope said again. She didn’t want them to hear. This was hers. Her fault. Her stupidity. Her failing. She had let her child die inside her. Stillborn, they’d said, because of her preeclampsia. Because she’d failed as a mother before her child had even been born.
Her grandmother and sisters surrounded her then, and led her into the back seat of the car. “Tell her to come back someday,” Derek said. “I’ll talk. Tell her I’ll talk. We’ll talk.”
No one said anything on the way home. Hope fell asleep, only because her mind and body were too empty for anything else.
“I’ll take you all home,” Hope said when she woke up and saw they were at the apartment.
“I am home, remember?” Gracie said with a sad smile. “But we want to stay with you tonight. Matt can stay at my place with Josh. I’m sure they’ll both understand.”
Matt. Hope pictured him sitting in the living room with Zeus, both calm and relaxed. All she wanted was to walk in and have him look up and smile at her. But she didn’t want to fall asleep in his arms again. Not until she could get rid of the aching that sometimes gripped her heart when she was with him. The pain that didn’t allow her to breathe. “I want to be with Matt,” she said abruptly, feeling her mind hit a road block when she thought of that pain again. “I mean, not because I need him and not you, but only because I need small talk right now, and I don’t think I can do that with you tonight.”
Paige put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed. “Believe it or not, I understand. I don’t know if it’s truly what you need, but I understand.”
“I get it, too,” Gracie said. “And don’t worry—I’ll take Paige and Grandma home.”
Grandma Sherry sighed. “I want to be with you, Hope, but that’s my need, not yours. I understand that. Just please promise me that you’ll call me if you think you need me.”
“I will.” Hope smiled a little then. “I always do.”
She stepped into an empty apartment. No Matt. No Zeus. Disappointed, she fell into her usual routine. She dug her cell phone out of her purse to charge it in the little charging station she’d set up near the kitchen countertop and saw that Matt had sent her a text message hours ago, telling her he’d be late because his mom wanted to spend time with him. Hope nodded, understanding. It must have been a shock for his mom to see his house burned to the ground.
Normally, loneliness was not a problem. She was good with being her own company. But not tonight. Not when a deeply buried feeling in her heart was beating loudly, demanding to be heard, and fighting hard to overpower that very heart’s vital need to silence it. After a long, hot, body-numbing shower, Hope turned back the covers and decided to read for a while, to keep her brain busy. Only she didn’t feel like reading the business book by her nightstand. It was mind-numbing, not mind-engaging. She went to the guest room closet to look through the old boxes Grandma Sherry had brought over a while back. Maybe there was an old favorite there.
It was in the very first box. The book Grandma Sherry had once called Hope’s bible. It had been read and reread by her, as evidenced by the multicolored Post-it Notes sticking out of every other page. Hope put the book down, shut her eyes, and tried to slow her suddenly painful breaths.
* * *
Matt had been calling Hope to tell her when he’d be home, and to share his news, but she hadn’t picked up. When he got home, her car was in the garage, but when he walked down the hallway to knock on her open bedroom door, to show her his news, he saw the lamp on her nightstand was on and the covers were turned back, but she wasn’t there. The door to her bathroom was open, too, and it was dark. He called out and Zeus sniffed and barked, too, but there was no answer. Matt walked back out to see that both her cell phone and her purse were on an end table near the kitchen countertop where she always left them. It was odd. Maybe she was next door with Gracie. After a moment’s hesitation, he went over to knock on Gracie’s door. But Gracie and Josh had no clue where she could be, either, and Gracie was instantly worried.
“Let me call Grandma and Paige. Today was a tough day for her, and we wouldn’t have left her alone but she thought you were home. Maybe she had one of them pick her up when she realized you weren’t.”
“It’s ten p.m., not too late, but what if she went to sleep earlier than usual and started sleepwalking?” he asked.
“It’s happened before,” Gracie admitted while she paced and waited for her grandmother to pick up. “When she was little, but still, why don’t you—”
But Matt was already halfway out the door. “Drive over to Nome Court while you make your calls,” he finished for her.
* * *
Hope walked up the small hill and stopped by a large, single gravestone. Her breath caught. She hadn’t been here since the small burial service eight years before. Only she, her sisters, Grandma Sherry, Ruby, and Rosa had attended.
Maximillian Stokes
Benjamin Piper
Laura Stokes Piper
Zoe Piper Shumaker
Until we meet again.
Until we meet again. Tears rolled down Hope’s face. Grandma Sherry had originally chosen it for Grandpa Max, because it was all she wanted, but they’d kept the sentiment for all those laid to rest under the simple headstone, because it was all any of them wanted. A promise to meet again.
Her gaze flitted to her mom’s name, and she sighed. “I’m sorry I was angry at you for being weak. I didn’t understand weakness. If I could get up and do what needed to be done at twelve, why couldn’t you, when you were supposed to be the adult?” She knelt down. “When I finally understood, you were gone, and I couldn’t say I was sorry. But I’m sorry, Mom. For being mad. I wish I could’ve forgiven you in time.” It was something she’d said aloud to her mom many times over the years, in the darkness of her room, and she’d long ago felt she and her mom had made peace, but it felt different to say the words once more in her final resting place. Until we meet again. “Are you all taking care of each other?”
She then took a deep breath and forced herself to look down. Zoe. She traced the name, her entire body aching. Derek hadn’t wanted to look at baby name books, so Hope had chosen Zoe, because it meant life, and Hope had felt like both she and the baby were dying. Derek had shut them out. And Hope had drowned in the silence. She could’ve taken it if he’d told her he had regrets. She could’ve taken it if he’d told her he wanted to leave. She could’ve taken it he’d told her he didn’t love them. She would have carried on.
But his denials that anything was wrong, his teasing her for being paranoid, telling her it was just the hormones, before retreating again into brooding and silence had confused her. Never had she felt such confusion. Her future had always been clear to her, and suddenly it wasn’t. Suddenly she was a fool who had messed up. Gotten married to someone she no longer understood and pregnant with her child before her first year of college was over. She’d lost her cross-country scholarship when she’d become pregnant. Derek hated his job. He no longer dreamed. And the bills began piling up. Paige had married a jerk, and Gracie was fighting for her reputation in court. All had caused her anxiety like she’d never known. And she could barely breathe from worrying.
“I’m sorry, Zoe,” she said, crying now. “It wasn’t Derek who didn’t give you a chance, it was me. I did this to you. I didn’t take care of you. And I can’t take it. I can’t. I want to go back and do right by you. I wanted you so much. But I should’ve left him. Forgotten him. Forgotten about college for a year. I should have worried about you inside me, and not your future outside me.” She put her fist to her chest because her lungs hurt, the way they did sometimes, right before she went to sleep. She closed her eyes and allowed herself to feel it this time. The seemingly endless grief. The grief she’d swallowed the day she’d found out Paige was pregnant, too, and was worrying about Hope too much. She hadn’t wanted Paige to forget to breathe, too. Hope pressed her hand to her chest again and took in a painful gulp of air.
* * *
Matt was nearly out of his mind with worry. Hope hadn’t been on Nome Court or anywhere along the way. Gracie had just called to say she wasn’t with Paige or her grandmother either. Now her sisters, their boyfriends, their grandmother, and probably half the town were out searching for Hope, too.
He was driving down a lonely hill when he thought he caught sight of a human shape, kneeling in front of shadows. He hit the brakes, turned the wheel, hit the gas pedal, and braked to a stop again in front of a park. His headlights clearly showed a woman getting to her feet. It was Hope. Relief washed over him, and he quickly texted her sisters and grandmother to tell them he’d found her. But then he wondered what he should do. If she was sleepwalking and he called her name as he ran up to her, he might scare her. The best thing would be to approach her carefully. But before he could get out of the car, Hope started to sprint in the opposite direction, toward the reserve. If he didn’t get to her quickly, she’d be hidden by the trees and darkness, and he’d have a hard time finding her. So he hit the gas pedal, jumped over the sidewalk, and whizzed by her, turning the wheel and braking in front of the reserve. Tires again squealed and dogs barked. He jumped out. “Hope! It’s me!” he called to her, his hands out in front of him.
Hope, who had started to run again in the opposite direction, spun around. “Matt? What was that? Beaming your headlights at me from the parking lot and then driving at me like a loon! I thought you were going to run me over and that my family would have to find my body here, of all places!”
“I was worried you would run into the reserve, and I wouldn’t be able to find you. It’s dark in there,” he explained, wondering if she was awake. She certainly looked awake. She was staring at his minivan with a stunned look on her face. “Do you remember me?” he asked next.
“You think I’m sleepwalking? Oh…” Understanding dawned on her face. “You were worried because you thought I was sleepwalking. No. I’m awake. I—I know it looks odd, but…” her voice trailed away and she ended on a sigh.
It took a moment to get it through his head that she really was awake, and that her face was tear-streaked. He reached out to her, but Zeus hopped out of the car, followed by Shakira. Both went up to Hope to beg her for attention. Her face, which had become an emotionless mask, came to life. “Who’s this?” she asked in a surprised tone as she bent down to give both dogs some love.
“Shakira. I called you to tell you, but you didn’t pick up. I was telling Johnny and Marissa about my plans to find a companion for Zeus when they mentioned one of Marissa’s students had found a stray dog, but didn’t have room for her. The girl was devastated because they were going to have to take the dog to a shelter. They made a quick call, and we went to pick her up after I left my mom’s house. I think it was love at first sight for both of them.” Shakira was missing her left ear, and Zeus was missing part of his right. Matt wondered if that had been part of their instant bonding. He shook his head, trying not to think about what had happened to them. They looked so happy now. “And I know two dogs wasn’t part of the deal,” he continued. “But Ruby and Rosa told me the two dogs can stay when I move into Gracie’s apartment at the end of the week. Is it okay if we all stay with you in the meantime? I understand if you say no, I know it’s a bit much.”
“How could I mind?” she asked, looking down at both dogs with tenderness. She noticed Shakira’s ear then and planted a small kiss there, the way she’d done with him. His heart ached, and he longed to take her in his arms again. He looked at her, but she was caught up in the dogs. “Zeus likes them tall, golden, and furry, I see,” she said, ruffling Shakira’s curly locks.
“Yes. And just so you know, they didn’t think I drove like a loon at all. They thought I drove like a badass,” he said, to see if he could get a smile out of her.
She pretended to roll her eyes. “All right. I’ll give you that first turn. That was kind of badass.” Shakira almost knocked Hope down in excitement, almost as if she was happy that Hope had given Matt a compliment. “Shakira’s a good name for her. She’s full of energy. But you won’t be able to continue your mythology theme.”
“I guess not. Although for Shakira’s sake, I hope Zeus the dog doesn’t live up to his name. Zeus the god was quite the ladies’ man.”
“Few of us live up to our names,” she said, and he noticed something different in her expression. A deep sadness. She averted her eyes and when he shifted his gaze, he inadvertently caught sight of the book she’d set on the grass next to her, What to Expect When You’re Expecting. It looked old and worn. He quickly looked away. It was then he noticed they were in a cemetery—not a park.
The book, the cemetery, Hope’s tear-streaked face…
“Hope?” She looked up. God, what could he say? He’d just peeled down two rows of gravestones and scared Hope away from something that had been important to her. “I’m sorry…I didn’t mean to interrupt your private moment. I was worried—”
Hope went up to him and put a finger to his lips. “I want to heal, Matt. I’m here because I want to heal. I don’t know why or how, but here you are in the middle of it all, with Zeus and Shakira, and it feels…okay. Like I can survive the pain. And I want to face it, and survive it—for my sisters, for my grandmother, for my employees…” her voice trailed off a moment, and she took a breath. “And for me and you. I want to trust you, Matt. Because of who you are. I want to be okay with the things I don’t know. I don’t want to let what you don’t say get to me.”
He hugged her to him and kissed the top of her head, but she didn’t stay still for long. After a moment, she stepped back, took his hand, and led him to a grave. He read the names. “Your grandfather, mother, and…” He looked at her. “Daughter?”
She nodded and her throat worked. “Stillborn. I—” A breath shuddered through her. “I didn’t take care of myself. Preeclampsia, they said. High blood pressure. I brought it on, my stress brought it on. Derek checked out, and I—” She looked down and began to breathe quickly, and he put a hand on her shoulder.
“Stop. You loved her, Hope. You loved Zoe. I have no doubt about that, and I think you don’t either. You loved her, but she didn’t make it.”
Hope closed her eyes, but he saw tears falling. He hugged her to him again, tightly. She fisted his shirt and buried her head in it, and they stayed like that a long time. Hope crying softly, Matt wishing he could absorb her pain, until doors slammed and Hope jumped. Soon, her sisters’ and grandmother’s voices could be heard. “I forgot to tell you—”
“They’re never far.” She gave him a half-hearted watery smile and quickly wiped her tears with the back of her sleeve. Soon, she was out of his arms and engulfed by them, and he couldn’t get a word in. When he caught her eye, he lifted his hand in goodbye, sensing that they needed to be there together, the three sisters, their grandmother, and the family that was no longer with them.
He drove home, to Hope’s, and thought about family. His mother had been his only family, and for a long time, it had been enough. It had been more than enough, because they’d been safe and that had felt like everything. Then Logan slowly earned his way in. That had expanded their world. It had taught his mom to trust again, and Matt to trust someone other than his mom for the first time ever. It was what eventually led him to become involved in his school and the community at large. And now, if he was honest with himself, he could see he was beginning to hope for even more. A person to share his life with.
This time, when Hope stepped into her apartment, Matt and Zeus were there, along with Shakira. All three looked up. Matt opened his arms to her and she went to sit on his lap. “Are you okay?” he whispered in her ear.
“I don’t know. Maybe someday. Being like this, with you, helps.”
“But you wish it didn’t.”
She looked up at him, surprised. “You’re right. I wish it didn’t. I wish I didn’t need anyone outside my family, but I’ve been thinking that it’ll be okay to feel like this with you.”
He smiled and kissed the tip of her nose. “That’s because your heart and my heart are very, very old friends.” She looked up at him, surprised at how the simple words described how she felt, too, and he said, “It’s in a poem by Hafiz, a Sufi poet from Persia. My mom has a book of his poetry that she would read to me as a child. One now especially reminds me of you.” His smile had turned into his infectious grin, and she lifted an eyebrow, expecting to soon be smiling and rolling her eyes. “I caught the happy virus last night, when I was out singing beneath the stars. It is remarkably contagious—So kiss me.”
“Are you seriously comparing me to a virus?”
“I am.” He grinned fully. “A happy virus I caught nine months ago when you showed up at my doorstep.”
She kissed him, then, as the poet demanded.