She slams my door shut behind her and I immediately fall back onto the bed, feeling even more hopeless than before I walked through my front door.
I can’t be right. It’s just a coincidence, I can’t be right. She wouldn’t do something like this. I squeeze the tears back and refuse to believe it. There has to be some other explanation. Maybe Holder is confused. Maybe Karen is confused.
I know I’m confused.
I take off my dress and throw on a t-shirt, then turn out the light and crawl under the covers. I’m hoping I wake up tomorrow to realize this whole night was just a bad dream. If it’s not, I don’t know how much more I can take before my strength is completely diminished. I stare up at the stars, glowing above my head, and I begin counting them. I push everyone and everything else away and focus, focus, focus on the stars.
Dean walks back to his yard and he turns around and looks at me. I bury my head back into my arm and try to stop crying. I know they probably want to play hide-n-seek again before I have to go back inside, so I need to stop being sad so we can play.
“Hope!”
I look up at Dean and he isn’t looking at me anymore. I thought he called my name, but he’s looking at a car. It’s parked in front of my house and the window is rolled down.
“Come here, Hope,”the lady says. She’s smiling and asking me to come to her window. I feel like I know her, but I can’t remember her name. I stand up so I can go see what she wants. I wipe the dirt off my shorts and walk to the car. She’s still smiling and she looks really nice. When I walk up to the car, she hits the button that unlocks the doors.
“Are you ready to go, sweetie? Your daddy wants us to hurry.”
I didn’t know I was supposed to go anywhere. Daddy didn’t say we were going anywhere today.
“Where are we going?” I ask her.
She smiles and reaches over to the handle, then opens the door for me. “I’ll tell you when we’re on our way. Get in and put your seatbelt on, we can’t be late.”
She really doesn’t want to be late to where we’re going. I don’t want her to be late, so I climb into the front seat and shut my door. She rolls up the window and starts driving away from my house.
She looks at me and smiles, then reaches into the backseat. She hands me a juice box, so I take it out of her hand and open the straw.
“I’m Karen,” she says. “And you get to stay with me for a little while. I’ll tell you all about it when we get there.”
I take a sip from my juice. It’s apple juice. I love apple juice.
“But what about my daddy? Is he coming, too?”
Karen shakes her head. “No, sweetie. It’ll just be you and me when we get there.”
I put the straw back in my mouth because I don’t want her to see me smile. I don’t want her to know that I’m happy my daddy isn’t coming with us.
I sit up.
It was a dream.
It was just a dream.
I can feel my heart beating wildly in every facet of my body. It’s beating so hard I can hear it. I’m panting for breath and covered in sweat.
It was just a dream.
I attempt to convince myself of just that. I want to believe with all my heart that the memory I just had wasn’t a real one. It can’t be.
But it was. I remember it clearly, like it happened yesterday. With every single memory I’ve recalled over the last few days, a new one pops up after it. Things I’ve either been repressing or was just too young to recall are coming back to me full-force. Things I don’t want to remember. Things I wish I never knew.
I throw the covers off of me and reach over to the lamp, flipping the switch. The room fills with light and I scream at the realization that someone else is in my bed. As soon as the scream escapes my mouth, he wakes up and shoots straight up on the bed.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I whisper loudly.
Holder glances at his watch, then rubs his eyes with his palms. When he wakes up enough to respond, he places his hand on my knee. “I couldn’t leave you. I just needed to make sure you were okay.” He puts his hand on my neck, right below my ear, and brushes along my jaw with his thumb. “Your heart,” he says, feeling my pulse beating against his fingertips. “You’re scared.”
Seeing him in my bed, caring for me like he is…I can’t be mad at him. I can’t blame him. Despite the fact that I want to be mad at him, I just can’t. If he wasn’t here right now to comfort me after the realization I just had, I don’t know what I would do. He’s done nothing but place blame on himself for every single thing that’s ever happened to me. I’m beginning to accept the fact that maybe he needs comforting just as much as I do. For that, I allow him to steal another piece of my heart. I grab his hand that’s touching my neck and I squeeze it.