* * *
She closes her eyes and lays her head on my shoulder. She tightens her grip around me, so I tighten mine in return. I wait. I wait for it to sink in. I wait for the tears. I wait for the heartbreak because I know for a fact it’s coming.
We sit in silence for several minutes, but the tears never come. I begin to wonder if everything I just said to her is even registering. “Say something,” I beg.
She doesn’t make a sound. She doesn’t even move. Her lack of reaction is starting to worry me, so I place my hand on the back of her head and lower my head closer to hers. “Please. Say something.”
She slowly lifts her face away from my shoulder and she looks at me with dry eyes. “You called me Hope. Don’t call me that. It’s not my name.”
I didn’t even realize I did. “I’m sorry, Sky.”
Her eyes grow cold and she slides off me, then stands up. “Don’t call me that, either,” she says.
I stand up and take both of her hands, but she pulls away and turns toward the car. I haven’t really thought out what I would do or say after she finally found out the truth from me. I’m not at all prepared for whatever comes next.
“I need a chapter break,” she says, continuing to walk away.
“I don’t even know what that means,” I say, following behind her. Whatever she needs, it’s more than just a chapter break. She needs a chapter break within a chapter break within a chapter break. I can’t imagine how confused she must be right now.
She continues to walk away so I grab her arm but she immediately jerks away from me. She spins around and her eyes are wide with fear and confusion. She begins to take deep breaths like she’s attempting to hold off a panic attack. I don’t know what to say to her and I know she doesn’t want me to touch her right now.
She takes two quick steps forward and she reaches up and grabs my face, standing on the tips of her toes. She presses her lips firmly to mine and kisses me desperately, but I can’t find it in me to kiss her back. I know she’s just scared and confused right now and she’s doing whatever she can to not think about it.
She pulls away from my mouth when she realizes I’m not kissing her back, then she reaches up and slaps me.
What she’s experiencing right now is more than likely more traumatic and more emotional than anything someone can experience in life, short of death. I try to remember that when she reaches up and slaps me again, then pushes against my chest. Panic consumes her completely and she’s screaming and hitting me and the only thing I can do is spin her around and pull her against my chest. I wrap my arms around her from behind and press my lips to her ear. “Breathe,” I whisper. “Calm down, Sky. I know you’re confused and scared, but I’m here. I’m right here. Just breathe.”
I hold her for several minutes, allowing her time to gather her thoughts. I know she has questions. I just need her mind to the point that it can handle all the answers.
“Were you ever going to tell me who I was?” she asks after she pulls away from me. “What if I never remembered? Would you have ever told me? Were you scared I would leave you and you’d never get your chance to screw me? Is that why you’ve been lying to me this whole time?”
The questions she just asked have all been my biggest fears. I’ve been so scared she wouldn’t understand my reasoning for not telling her. “No. That’s not how it was. That’s not how it is. I haven’t told you because I’m scared of what will happen to you. If I report it, they’ll take you from Karen. They’ll more than likely arrest her and send you back to live with your father until you turn eighteen. Do you want that to happen? You love Karen and you’re happy here. I didn’t want to mess that up for you.”
She shakes her head and laughs a disheartening laugh. “First of all,” she says. “They wouldn’t put Karen in jail because I can guarantee you she knows nothing about this. Second, I’ve been eighteen since September. If my age was the reason you weren’t being honest, you would have told me by now.”
I look down at the ground because it’s too hard to look her in the eyes.
“Sky, there’s so much I still need to explain to you,” I say. “Your birthday wasn’t in September. Your birthday is May 7. You don’t even turn eighteen for six more months. And Karen?” I walk forward and take her hands. “She has to know, Sky. She has to. Think about it. Who else could have done this?”
As soon as I say it, she pulls her hands from mine and steps back like I’ve just insulted her.
“Take me home,” she says, shaking her head in disbelief. “I don’t want to hear anything else. I don’t want to know anything else tonight.”
I grab her by the hands again and she slaps them away. “TAKE ME HOME!”
• • •
We’re parked in her driveway sitting silently in her car. I made her promise me she wouldn’t say anything to Karen during the drive back to her house. She says she isn’t going to say anything until we talk again tomorrow, but I still don’t like the thought of leaving her here in the condition she’s in.
She pulls open the door, but I grab her hand. “Wait,” I say. She pauses. “Will you be okay tonight?”
She sighs and falls back against the passenger seat. “How?” she says with a defeated voice. “How can I possibly be okay after tonight?”
I push her hair behind her ear. I don’t want to leave her. I want to reassure her that I’m not walking away from her this time. “It’s killing me . . . letting you go like this,” I say. “I don’t want to leave you alone. Can I come back in an hour?”
She shakes her head no. “I can’t,” she says weakly. “It’s too hard being around you right now. I just need to think. I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”
I nod, then pull my hand back and place it on the steering wheel. As much as it hurts, I need to give her what she wants right now. I know she needs time to process all the things going through her mind. To be honest, I think I need time to process it, too.
Chapter Forty
* * *
Les,
She knows.
And I can’t believe I just dropped her off at her house and left. I don’t care if she doesn’t want to be around me right now. There’s no way in hell I can just leave her alone. I wish you were here right now because I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.
H
I shoot straight up when I hear her scream next to me on her bed. She’s gasping for breath.
Another nightmare.
“What the hell are you doing here?” she says.
I glance down at my watch, then rub my eyes. I’m trying to sort out what all has been real in the past few hours and what all was a dream.
Unfortunately, it was all real.
I place my hand on her leg and scoot closer to her. Her eyes are terrified. “I couldn’t leave you. I just needed to make sure you were okay.” I slide my hand around her neck and her pulse is pounding against my palm. “Your heart. You’re scared.”
She’s looking at me wide-eyed. Her chest is heaving and the fear rolling off her is breaking me. She brings her hand to mine and squeezes it. “Holder . . . I remember.”
I immediately turn her to face me and I force her eyes up to mine. “What do you remember?” I ask, nervous for her answer.
She begins to shake her head, not wanting to say it. I need her to say it, though. I need to know what she remembers. I nod my head, silently coaxing her to continue. She takes a deep breath. “It was Karen in that car. She did it. She’s the one who took me.”
This is exactly what I didn’t want her to feel. I hug her. “I know, babe. I know.”
She clings to my shirt and I tighten my grip, but push her away as soon as her bedroom door swings open.
“Sky?” Karen says, watching us from the doorway.
Karen looks at me, trying to figure out why I’m here. She turns back to Sky. “Sky? What . . . what are you doing?”
Sky spins back around and looks me desperately in the eyes. “Get me out of here,” she begs in a whis
per. “Please.”
I nod, then stand up and walk to her closet. I don’t know where she wants to go, but I know she’ll need clothes. I find a duffel bag on the top shelf, then walk it to her bed. “Throw some clothes in here. I’ll get what you need out of the bathroom.”
She nods and heads to her closet while I head into her bathroom to grab whatever else she might need. Karen is pleading with her not to leave. When my hands are full, I walk out of the bathroom and Karen has her hands on Sky’s shoulders.
“What are you doing? What’s wrong with you? You’re not leaving with him.”
I walk around Karen and try to remain as calm as possible for all of our sakes. “Karen, I suggest you let go of her.”
Karen spins around, shocked at my words. “You are not taking her. If you so much as walk out of this house with her, I’m calling the police.”
I don’t say anything. I’m not sure if Sky wants her to know that she knows the truth, so I do my best to refrain from saying what I’ve wanted to say to Karen since the moment I realized she’s the one responsible. I zip the duffel bag and reach for Sky’s hand. “You ready?”
She nods.
“This isn’t a joke!” Karen yells. “I’ll call the police! You have no right to take her!”
Sky reaches into my pocket and pulls out my cell phone, then steps toward Karen. “Here,” she says. “Call them.”
She’s testing Karen. Her wheels are churning as fast as mine and she’s hoping she can prove that Karen is innocent in all of this. It makes my heart break for her, because I know Karen isn’t innocent. This is only going to end badly.
Karen refuses to take the phone and Sky grabs her hand and shoves the phone into her palm. “Call them! Call the police, Mom! Please,” she says. Sky’s eyebrows draw apart and she pleads desperately, one last time. “Please,” she whispers.
I can’t watch Sky endure this for another second, so I grab her hand and lead her to the window, then help her climb out of it.
Chapter Forty-one
* * *
I lift my head off the pillow and immediately cover my eyes. The afternoon sun is so bright, it’s painful. I pry my arm from around her and quietly lift off the bed.
I somehow managed the whole drive to Austin last night. I don’t think I could have stayed awake another minute, so I pulled over at the first hotel we could find. It was daytime when we finally made it to our room, so we both took turns showering, then crashed. She’s been asleep for over six hours now and I know how much she needs it.
I softly brush the hair away from her cheek and lean down and kiss it. She pulls her arm out from under the blanket and looks up at me with tired eyes. “Hey,” she whispers, somehow smiling despite everything she’s going through.
“Shh,” I say, not wanting her to wake up just yet. “I’m about to leave for a little while to get us something to eat. I’ll wake you when I get back, okay?”
She nods and closes her eyes, then rolls back over.
• • •
After we finish eating, she walks to the bed and slips on her shoes. “Where you headed?” I ask her.
She ties her shoes and stands up, wrapping her arms around my neck. “I want to go for a walk,” she says. “And I want you to go with me. I’m ready to start asking questions.”
I give her a quick kiss, then grab the key and head to the door. “Then let’s go.”
We eventually make our way to the hotel courtyard and take a seat in one of the cabanas. I pull her to me. “You want me to tell you what I remember? Or do you have specific questions?”
“Both,” she says. “But I want to hear your story first.”
I kiss her on the side of the head, then rest my head against hers while we stare out over the courtyard. “You have to understand how surreal this feels for me, Sky. I’ve thought about what happened to you every single day for the past thirteen years. And to think I’ve been living two miles away from you for seven of those years? I’m still having a hard time processing it myself. And now, finally having you here, telling you everything that happened . . .”
I sigh, remembering back to that day. “After the car pulled away, I went into the house and told Les that you left with someone. She kept asking me who, but I didn’t know. My mother was in the kitchen, so I went and told her. She didn’t really pay any attention to me. She was cooking supper and we were just kids. She had learned to tune us out. Besides, I still wasn’t sure anything had happened that wasn’t supposed to happen, so I didn’t sound panicked or anything. She told me to just go outside and play with Les. The way she was so nonchalant about it made me think everything was okay. Being so young, I was positive adults knew everything, so I didn’t say anything else about it. Les and I went outside to play and another couple of hours had passed by when your dad came outside, calling your name. As soon as I heard him call your name, I froze. I stopped in the middle of my yard and watched him standing on his porch, calling for you. It was that moment that I knew he had no idea you had left with someone. I knew I did something wrong.”
“Holder,” she interrupts. “You were just a little boy.”
Yeah. A little boy who was old enough to know the difference between right and wrong. “Your dad walked over to our yard and asked me if I knew where you were.” This is where it gets hard for me. This is the point I realized the awful mistake I had made. “Sky, you have to understand something,” I say to her. “I was scared of your father. I was just a kid and knew I had just done something terribly wrong by leaving you alone. Now your police chief father is standing over me, his gun visible on his uniform. I panicked. I ran back into my house and ran straight to my bedroom and locked the door. He and my mother beat on the door for half an hour, but I was too scared to open it and admit to them that I knew what happened. My reaction worried both of them, so he immediately radioed for backup. When I heard the police cars pull up outside, I thought they were there for me. I still didn’t understand what had happened to you. By the time my mother coaxed me out of the room, three hours had already passed since you left in the car.”
She can feel how much this hurts me to talk about. She pulls one of her hands out of the sleeve of her shirt and places it in mine.
“I was taken to the station and questioned for hours. They wanted to know if I knew the license plate number, what kind of car took you, what the person looked like, what they said to you. Sky, I didn’t know anything. I couldn’t even remember the color of the car. All I could tell them was exactly what you were wearing, because you were the only thing I could picture in my head. Your dad was furious with me. I could hear him yelling in the hallway of the station that if I had just told someone right when it happened, they would have been able to find you. He blamed me. When a police officer blames you for losing his daughter, you tend to believe he knows what he’s talking about. Les heard him yelling, too, so she thought it was all my fault. For days, she wouldn’t even talk to me. Both of us were trying to understand what had happened. For almost six years we lived in this perfect world where adults are always right and bad things don’t happen to good people. Then, in the span of a minute, you were taken and everything we thought we knew turned out to be this false image of life that our parents had built for us. We realized that day that even adults do horrible things. Children disappear. Best friends get taken from you and you have no idea if they’re even alive anymore.
“We watched the news constantly, waiting for reports. For weeks they would show your picture on TV, asking for leads. The most recent picture they had of you was from right before your mother died, when you were only three. I remember that pissing me off, wondering how almost two years could have gone by without someone having taken a more recent picture. They would show pictures of your house and would sometimes show our house, too. Every now and then, they would mention the boy next door who saw it happen, but couldn’t remember any details. I remember one night . . . the last night my mother allowed us to watch the coverage on TV . . . one of the
reporters showed a panned-out image of both our houses. They mentioned the only witness, but referred to me as ‘The boy who lost Hope.’ It infuriated my mother so bad; she ran outside and began screaming at the reporters, yelling at them to leave us alone. To leave me alone. My dad had to drag her back inside the house.
“My parents did their best to try to make our life as normal as possible. After a couple of months, the reporters stopped showing up. The endless trips to the police station for more questioning finally stopped. Things began to slowly return to normal for everyone in the neighborhood. Everyone but Les and me. It was like all of our hope was taken right along with our Hope.”
She sighs when I’ve finished and she’s quiet for a while. “I’ve spent so many years hating my father for giving up on me,” she says. “I can’t believe she just took me from him. How could she do that? How could anyone do that?”
“I don’t know, babe.”
She sits up in the chair and looks me in the eyes. “I need to see the house,” she says. “I want more memories, but I don’t have any and right now it’s hard. I can barely remember anything, much less him. I just want to drive by. I need to see it.”
“Right now?”
“Yes. I want to go before it gets dark.”
Chapter Forty-two
* * *